Sunday, November 17, 2024

The Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost B - November 17, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Francis Beckham
The Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 28, November 17, 2024
 

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, O God, my sustainer and my comforter. Amen.

Yesterday, I returned to Holy Cross Monastery from five days of retreat in a little hermitage. This self-contained monastery-for-one, thoughtfully equipped with a small kitchen, table, chair, bed, bath, and deck, had everything a hermit (even a temporary one) could possibly need, and – thankfully – not a bit more. Perched on a Pennsylvania hillside, its large windows opened onto a densely wooded valley that, though now mostly devoid of leaves, was nevertheless alive – brimming, even – with deer, foxes, squirrels, and hundreds of birds of all kinds.

I spent hours sitting in the corner window nook, coffee mug in hand, surrounded by the sights and songs of these birds as they fluttered from branch to branch and tree to tree. Every now and then, the cardinals especially would alight onto the little deck, where they’d drop whatever bit of food they’d found and quickly gobble it up. I suppose the deck provided a momentary bit of solitude where they could eat in peace, without having to balance on a branch or fend off other hungry diners.

These birds became my unexpected retreat companions. In fact, in a very real sense, they became my retreat directors. They were fully aware of – if completely unphased by – my presence (after all, they couldn’t possibly have been oblivious to my awkward attempts at conversation from the deck). But whatever they may have lacked in interspecies communications skills, they more than compensated through their steady example of mindfulness and presence – an example I’ve been sorely in need of lately.  

Unconcerned about anything aside from the present moment, they simply, yet perfectly, existed as birds, with no thought – and certainly no worry – for either yesterday or tomorrow. I couldn’t help recalling these words of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry … Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them … Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?”

These are beautifully reassuring words, but, as we know, they’re not taken from the Gospel reading assigned for today. Instead, the lectionary has given us a noticeably more somber – some might even say apocryphal – reading selection, particularly in the Book of Daniel and in the Gospel of Mark. These are not very comfortable readings. They are, in many ways, quite dire. They abound with warnings of trouble ahead.

It’s fitting reading for this last regular Sunday after Pentecost. I say ‘regular’ because next Sunday – the Feast of Christ the King – is the last actual Sunday after Pentecost, the official crowning of Ordinary Time. But for this week at least we’re still basically in familiar Pentecostal territory, with green vestments and a focus on living into the Reign of God. But unlike most of the previous twenty-six Sundays, whose themes have mainly been the day-to-day teachings and ministry of Jesus, this Sunday’s readings are more of a frantic, last-minute check to make sure we really understand what we’re signing up for.

Probably it was just projection brought on by a case of hermitage-brain, but in reflecting on the Gospel reading I was struck particularly by what I perceived to be Jesus’ markedly troubled mood. (One becomes very aware of moods during extended periods of solitude.) He doesn’t quite seem himself today. His responses to the disciples’ observations about the Temple buildings and their questions about the complex’s impending destruction strike me as a bit distracted. He’s not completely present to the moment. He seems a bit “in his head” and fixated on what’s to come rather than on what’s happening right now.

That’s relatable, don’t you think? For any number of personal and societal reasons, we’re all living lives increasingly marked by anxiety and distraction, weighed down by our pasts and worried about our futures. As a result, there no longer seems to be much of a present. And that’s a big problem, because of the three tenses – past, present, and future – the present is the only place that can truly be said to exist (in the usual human experience of time, anyway) and, therefore, it's the only place where we can truly live our lives.

Of course, unlike Matthew’s birds of the air – or even the birds of the hermitage – we humans do have to occasionally reflect on the past and plan for the future. Otherwise, how can we possibly hope to learn the lessons of our experiences or make provision for legitimate needs that require planning? It’s in a space similar to this where I think we find Jesus today. He and the disciples have just exited the Temple, where he’s pointed out the hypocrisy of the of the powerful and shown them what true generosity looks like through the parable of the poor widow’s contribution. And now, back outside in the light of day, he ponders how best to make the disciples see that these lessons are about to have very real implications for them. Especially since, at this point in Mark’s gospel, his time with them is running short.

“Aren’t the buildings impressive!” the disciples say. “Hmm? Oh, yes, they are,” responds Jesus. “But they won’t be here forever. In fact, there isn’t a single stone of them that isn’t going to be thrown down.” This surely wasn’t a response the disciples were expecting. I can imagine Peter, James, John, and Andrew exchanging questioning glances as Jesus walks on, up to the Mount of Olives. When they arrive, they ask him about what he said back at the Temple. But rather than explaining, “Oh, well, you see, in another forty years or so, the Romans are going to tear the place down,” he begins pouring out what I sense has been weighing heavily on his mind – and heart – for a while now.

“Look,” he says, “you all have to be careful! There are going to be people who will try to deceive you, they’re even going to tell you that I sent them, or that they’re actually me! People are actually going to believe them and be led astray. Don’t let them trick you! And bad things are certain to happen – wars, national crises, political unrest, earthquakes, even famines. But whatever you do, remember what I’ve told you. These kinds of things are inevitable, but they’re going to lead to the future God has promised!”

The sections immediately following this passage, but not included in today’s Gospel reading, sound even less encouraging, including “The Coming Persecution,” and “The Great Tribulation.” We can only imagine the disciples’ reactions to all these things. But Jesus has to tell them what to expect. He’s concerned about his friends and doesn’t want them caught off-guard and unprepared. Continuing his ministry after he’s gone in spite of the dangers surrounding them is going to come at a cost. Defying the prevailing culture by refusing to collaborate with systems of oppression; insisting on speaking out against injustice; demanding mercy be shown to the foreigner and the marginalized; resisting violence and threats of violence for boldly proclaiming God’s love for everyone, especially the people who are targeted and vilified by those claiming to be acting in Christ’s name; and, perhaps most of all, calling-out the complacency, indifference, and hypocrisy of those benefiting from such blasphemy, is going to get them into trouble. Jesus is clear this is not a hypothetical. The disciples – and each of us – must be ready to proclaim the Gospel and bear the costs, the “birth pangs.” Like it or not, it’s our only way of reaching the future God has in store for us.

But to be clear, the warnings of doom and gloom – as essential as they are – aren’t themselves the point. The actual point is the same one that’s been prophesized, promised, and longed-for since the beginning: namely, the ultimate reunion of all creation with its Creator, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.

Daniel tells us about it first: After speaking of a time of “great anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence,” he declares that “Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” Then, in the Letter to the Hebrews, we hear about the fruits already borne to us through the suffering endured by Jesus, namely confidence, hearts full of true faith, and – above all – hope.

With these assurances in mind, we can take the warnings of trouble for what they really are: way-markers on the road to everlasting life. While not always easy to endure, they are for us a sure sign that we’re living into the Way of Jesus, who has not only endured these same worries and sufferings, but who continues to be with us in own our trials as well. This promise is written in our hearts and in the beauty of God’s world all around us, including in the birds of the air, and in each other.

Grounded in the gift of the present moment, and letting tomorrow’s worries take care of themselves, may we walk confidently with one another into the future where God is already waiting for us, and may peace and all that is good be with us, and all whom we love, today and always. Amen.


Sunday, November 10, 2024

The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost B - November 10, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Ephrem Arcement
The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 27 B

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

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

          Life is full of contrasts.  The young and the old.  The rich and the poor.  The good and the bad.  The wise and the. . . not so wise.  Contrasts of color.  Contrasts of opinion.  Contrasts of personalities.  Contrasts of beliefs.  Some see these latter contrasts as life-enhancing, others as life-threatening.  Some live lives that make space for “the other,” while some live lives that dismiss, ignore, or exclude “the other.”  The tension that exists between “us and them” has existed from the dawn of time and is one of the persistent themes in both our secular and sacred writings since antiquity.  But there is one thematic contrast in our own Judeo-Christian Scriptures that may stand above all others, which unifies to whole sacred story from cover to cover.  It’s the contrast between power and weakness, between the callous heart of pride and the wide-open heart of humility.

          In the Gospel of Mark, we are in one instance presented with the self-assured scribe decked in his fine regalia basking in his notoriety and position of authority and honor.  In the other instance we are presented with a poor, defenseless widow with zero self-regard.  One is a taker, the other a giver.  One is preoccupied with a façade, the other with compassion.  One professes faith, the other lives it.

          This meta-contrast of power vs. weakness goes to the heart of the human story—and even beyond to the story of creation itself.  If the evolutionary journey of creation is one of “survival of the fittest,” embedded within our DNA is the ego drive to survive at whatever cost, even if it is at the cost of another part of God’s good creation.  Left unchecked, the ego mounts upon whatever chariot is available to conquer and to control and to dominate—all to secure the propagation of itself into the future.  It lives for immortality and can become consumed with fame, fortune, and the fantasies of its own grandiose imaginings.  The unchecked ego, then, becomes isolated, cut-off from the rest of creation exhausting itself by trying to live on its own terms, in its own fabricated reality.  And at the foundation of its bloated pride is no foundation at all.  There is nothing there but a small, insecure, frightened child masked in a sometimes presentable, often times threatening, persona expending its energy on justifying itself, on defending itself, and on asserting itself.  

          The dangers such a person or group of people that nurtures such egocentrism are obvious enough.  We see it in our civil discourse.  We see it in our politics.  If we are not vigilant, we can even see it in our religious communities.  And, alas, we see it in ourselves.  If only we all saw it in ourselves!  But we don’t, probably because it’s just too painful and uncomfortable.  And maybe the greatest danger facing us Americans at this critical time in our history is the validation, even celebration, of ego-inflation and the denigration of humility and weakness.

          It is prophetic, then, that in light of today’s current events the church in her liturgy holds up before us the dignity and honor of a poor widow.  In the world of biblical patriarchy, a woman who has lost her husband was among the most vulnerable of society.  Without a source of income, without civil recourse, without personal autonomy.  This is why the inspired authors demand particular care for widows.  They are to be provided food and shelter and even a husband, if possible.  And those who neglect and mistreat widows come under the strictest judgment.  Particularly in the prophets, the care of widows is the barometer for determining the health of the nation.  

          This all explains Jesus’ righteous indignation at the scribes who are devouring widows’ houses.  Notice the connection Jesus makes between the abuse of widows and the pomp that preoccupies the scribes.  For Jesus, they are intricately linked together in one unhealthy, unholy alliance.  The scribes religiously exploit the poor widow taking all that she had to, in effect, beautify themselves, of course, all “for the sake of the temple.”  And Jesus will not let such religious hypocrisy go by uncontested.  And so he calls them out on it.  

          The temple which the scribes were supposedly so concerned about was the place where Israel’s God dwelled on earth and the place where Israel could go to dwell with her God in prayer and find refuge and renewal.  Yet, time and again, the temple was exploited for personal aggrandizement and its purposes obscured and manipulated…and its God along with it.  Jesus, in full prophetic mode, subverts the scribes’ destructive egos by revealing where true power lies, right there in the selfless choice of a poor widow who had the ability to give all that she had, her two copper coins, to God.  There is the true manifestation of the presence of God. 

There is the true temple.

          Of course, there is more to the story.  And we hear it in today’s passage from Hebrews.  The poor widow’s gift of all that she had prefigures Christ himself who, as a priest, does not offer something outside himself, like the blood of bulls or goats, but sacrifices his own self.  The Scriptures say that he did this “to remove sin.”  Or, you could say, he did this to deal with the unchecked ego and its abuse of power.  This, then, is the good news for us today: that when God, the all-powerful, omnipotent Creator of all that is, chose to bear the divine heart to the world, it was done through one who, like a poor widow, walked the path of vulnerable humility and weakness, defenseless in the face of civil and religious power structures yet completely free from the egocentric entropy that those power structures create.  And by offering himself in total vulnerability on the cross, unleashes a power… you can say a superpower…upon the earth that alone can transfigure the calloused, power-hungry heart into a humble, open, and free heart that can give of itself without counting the cost, just like this poor, holy widow.

          Today’s other widow, the widow of Zeraphath from First Kings, teaches us another important lesson about such faith and about such a God.  So extreme was her crisis that she resigned herself to death, but she learns, through Elijah’s encouragement, that when we give of the little that we have, God’s power is unleashed and the little that we have can be turned into an unlimited source of life.  This is a truth repeated throughout the Bible, from barren womb of Sarah, to this widow of Zarephath, to the blood and water that poured out of the side of the crucified Savior.  And this truth extends beyond the Bible to us as well when our simple, yet sincere, acts of faith break open the treasury of God’s blessings and we come to know that power is made perfect in weakness.

          This has always been the church’s gospel, her good news to proclaim and live.  But, I assert that it is more crucial now perhaps than ever before that we as church understand clearly and live selflessly this gospel mandate.  Many today have deep, legitimate concerns about both the state of our country and the state of our world.  Many feel anxious and wonder if we’re heading all-too close to an irreversible precipice.  Many are confounded by the abuse of power and the legitimization of hatred and violence that has crept into our society, often at the expense of the most vulnerable in our communities.  And many feel that the distortion of reality may make it nearly impossible to find common ground between contrasting ideologies and fear the place to which this may eventually lead.  If you are among those that feel these things, and I certainly do myself, allow me to offer three Christian responses that may be helpful in light of today’s readings:

1.                 Don’t allow the contrast between your worldview and an opposing worldview cause you to demonize or dehumanize the other no matter how demonic or dehumanizing their worldview may be.  An “us vs. them” mentality will only widen the chasm.

2.                 The process toward justice and peace is a long one full of setbacks and disappointments.  So, hold to the faith that God remains God even when the clouds set in.

3.                 Never tire of preaching the gospel of our crucified Savior.  When the demonic head of hate, division, and lies begins to rear its head, and it almost certainly will, counter it with the gospel of love, unity, and truth.  And don’t just preach it, live this gospel of love in the face of hate, unity in the face of division, and truth in the face of lies.  Absorb these demonic forces in the power that God provides, and put them to death by your refusal to retaliate or propagate them. 

Love covers a multitude of sins.  

          Our Christ was consumed with a vision.  He called it the Kingdom of God.  It was a vision of a time when the demonic forces of hatred, division, and lies would be cast out completely and peace would envelop all creation.  We’re not there yet!  So, let us be consumed with this same vision and put our faith into practice and through our love for one another…all another…and our radical fidelity to the truth, let us continue to fight the good fight, not with the weapons of aggression and force but with the power that comes from God, hearts that make peace because they are at peace and hands that bless even when being cursed.

Sunday, November 3, 2024

The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost B - November 3, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky
The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 26B, November 3, 2024

Click here for an audio of the sermon


Today's gospel passage should be familiar to almost everyone here this morning. The so-called Great Commandment discourse appears in all three synoptic gospels, though each within a slightly different context and each taking a slightly different direction or turn. And we hear them every year in our Sunday Eucharist readings.
Last year we heard Matthew's rendition with its wonderful conclusion instantly recognizable to any who attended or still attend traditional language Anglican worship: “...on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  Next year we will hear Luke’s version. While different from Mark only in minor details, it concludes with the lawyer or scribe who posed the initial question about the greatest commandment asking Jesus a second follow-up question:  “And who is my neighbor?” And that, of course, leads into what is arguably Jesus’s most memorable parable, that of the Good Samaritan with its powerful concluding advice: “Go and do likewise.”
Mark's version that we hear this morning is probably the earliest and most concise of the three. And refreshingly, the lawyer or scribe is presented as a sincere seeker after truth rather than as an adversary setting Jesus up in some kind of test or trap. Maybe we can all take heart from this. Having said this, however, I find it difficult to know what more to say about this passage that has not already been said by me or by others. Is there anything new here? Anything revolutionary? Anything transformative?
This past week saw the conclusion of The Most Reverend Michael Curry’s nine-year term as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Bishop Michael, as he was known, was a gentle pastor and a captivating preacher. He preached here in this chapel in 2017. And a friend who heard him preach in Poughkeepsie said afterwards that it was like watching a whirling dervish in the high pulpit of Christ Church, so much so that he thought the bishop might just fly right out. I can believe that. I was present at the General Convention where he was elected Presiding Bishop and remember well the excitement and the hope that were palpable. I also attended his installation at the National Cathedral in Washington DC.  Again, it was a service of tremendous beauty, hope, and joy. Of course, Bp. Michael became an international celebrity for his sermon at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. He was, it is safe to say, not your usual Anglican divine; he was an heir to a tradition of enslavement and exclusion and a deep Christian spirituality that found accent and voice in his sermons here and around the world. For me, however, his legacy is summed up not in a new teaching, but in the new expression of an old one, just as Jesus himself and other rabbis did in their day. And that is his teaching: “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”  This axiom or formula does not tell us what we should or should not do. But it does give us a guideline, a rule, a measure to assess ourselves, our own actions or inaction as well as the dramas of our own interior life, of our own hearts. It is, as it were, the standard, the Golden Rule, for personal, social, and political life. “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”
In his living this guidance and in his fearless and unembarrassed embrace of Jesus in a church that has sometimes been reluctant to claim and own the name of its Savior and Lord, and in his work around the Beloved Community as a vision toward the Kingdom of God, Bishop Michael changed the language and heart of the Episcopal Church as one friend put it. “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” 
But—and maybe you knew this was coming—a caveat. We need to be careful and deliberate about what we love and how we love. St. Augustine writing 1600 years ago says: “Everybody loves; the question is, what is the object of our love? In Scripture we are not urged to stop loving, but instead to choose what we love.”  Augustine is right: everybody loves. Each of us has some orienting desire which shapes our decisions, our days, our lives. For too many it is quite basic. It is the simple desire for safety, food, and housing. For many others it is the desire for power. For others financial or vocational success. Or for healthy relationships. Others perhaps hope for freedom from paralyzing fear or anxiety or depression or to be cured once and for all of one or another physical malady. Truthfully, I think many of us have several such loves, and they sometimes appear to conflict with each other. And if you are like me, you have at best only a vague awareness of what many of these are. As so the 1980 Country pop song got it right:  we are often looking for love in all the wrong places, and mostly because we don’t know what it is we are looking for.
What to do?
A quarter of a century ago, at a deeply complicated and low point in my life, I poured out my secret pain to a priest friend who is now a bishop in the Church of England. And in response he sent me one of the most helpful letters I have ever received. It consisted solely of  a long quote from the Anglican laywoman, spiritual director and writer, Evelyn Underhill (1875 -1941)  It is a prayer for wholeness :
“O Lord, penetrate those murky corners where we hide memories and tendencies on which we do not care to look, but which we will not disinter and yield freely up to you, that you may purify and transmute them: the persistent buried grudge, the half-acknowledged enmity which is still smouldering; the bitterness of that loss we have not turned into sacrifice; the private comfort we cling to; the secret fear of failure which saps our initiative and is really inverted pride; the pessimism which is an insult to your joy, Lord; we bring all these to you, and we review them with shame and penitence in your steadfast light.”
It is obviously a prayer of penitence. But it is more than that. It is a prayer for the purifying and clarification and reordering of our loves so that in the end, we might love aright, that we might love God instead of some false image that we think is God, that we might say confidently with Bp. Curry: “If it’s not about love it’s not about God” and have some degree of trust that we are not entirely deceiving ourselves. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?
Today’s passage from Mark ends: “When Jesus saw that he (the scribe) answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”  Dean Andrew McGowan of Yale Divinity School comments: “...the scribe, being in conversation with Jesus himself, is already next to the one whose presence embodies the reign of God. Of course others have also been that close, but have failed to see what was in front of them.”
May we be counted among those who are not far from the kingdom of God. Like the scribe, let us draw near to Jesus and find in him the full outpouring of God’s essential nature as Love itself…a love that clarifies, purifies, and reorders our own precious loves…and blesses them. May we discover that Love today in Scripture and Sacrament, in prayer and service and above all in each other. And in the mirror.
Amen.