The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 9, July 5, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Robert James Magliula OHC

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, July 5, 2026

• Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
  Romans 7:15-25a
  Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

The lectionary today omits the little section of today’s Gospel which Matthew calls Jesus’ reproach of the cities.

“Then he began to reproach the cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you.” (Matt.11:20-24)

Let’s be honest. We don’t much like reproach in our lives or in our scriptures. Most would rather skip quickly to the good part, that part about the humble and gentle Jesus who we think is going to make life easy. But we need to hear these words of reproach as individuals and as a nation. It seems most appropriate during this 250^th anniversary that we hear it as a nation. They’re important words. Reproach by Jesus is not rejection but the other side of care and concern.

These are the towns where Jesus spent most of his ministry and where he did most of his miraculous works. They know Jesus well and he knows them. He knows their unbelief, their unwillingness to change, their refusal to yoke themselves to him and to his gospel.

“To what shall I compare this generation?” Jesus basically tells them that they are like a bunch of spoiled kids unhappy with whatever is offered them. They want it their way or no way. John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking and they said he was possessed. Jesus came eating and drinking and they call him a glutton and a drunkard who hangs out with the wrong kind of people.”

I think that Jesus would say the same to us today as a nation. Are we different from Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum? How are we responding to Christ and his gospel?

Reflecting on this question raises a deeper and more fundamental question. To what or whom are we yoked? To what or whom do we give ourselves? What or who takes priority in our lives, orienting how we live and relate to others, how we make decisions? We all harness our lives to something: another person, work, family, success, reputation, country, political party. Sometimes our yokes are more interior like fear, anxiety, anger, beliefs and opinions, the losses and tragedies of our lives. Regardless, they are the relationships and attachments that we depend on for meaning. For better or worse, they give us our life’s direction. We’ve all got them and usually more than one.

What yokes do you wear? As Christians, we know the right answer should be Jesus. But is that how we live? Is it reflected by our deeds and in our relationships, or just in our words?

If we are going to call ourselves Christians, we must yoke ourselves to Christ. He must be the primary and determining yoke. We cannot simply just hear the gospel and say our prayers. The gospel of Christ demands a response. The people of these cities have seen God among them; they have witnessed the signs. Jesus cleansed their lepers, healed their sick, cast out their demons, forgiven their sins, calmed the sea. Still, they reject Jesus and, before him, John the Baptist.

Sometimes we are like those little kids in the marketplace, unhappy with whatever is offered us. We want the gospel to fit our beliefs, desires, and agendas rather than shaping our beliefs, desires, and agendas to fit the gospel. That is not an option for Jesus. The yoke of Christ must reorient our lives and priorities.

It means we take seriously our life of discipleship. Our prayer is more about intimacy with God than getting what we want. We work for justice and the dignity of every human being. We care for the poor, feed the hungry, and defend the oppressed. We love our enemies. We offer forgiveness. Our faithfulness should be evident by how we live and speak. We let go of anger and don’t live in fear.

To be yoked to anything or anyone other than Christ will only leave us weary and burdened. Our lives will be frenzied and fragmented. This is a disease of the soul in which we end up comparing, competing, and judging ourselves and each other. There is no internal integrity. Our reserves run dry and we live exhausted with nothing of substance to offer, making our relationships superficial.

Too often we treat our weariness and medicate our burdens with addictions, a new toy, a vacation, a nap, a day off, busyness and perfectionism. Interior voids cannot be filled by exterior things. Often, we’re just as weary afterwards as we were before. These are not the antidote to our exhaustion. The antidote to our exhaustion begins with sharing the yoke of Christ, the heart of God and the heart of humanity beating as one.

Jesus isn’t upset because the cities misbehaved, but because they have chosen a life less than what they were created for. Jesus is like a loving parent looking at his exhausted children, so tired we do not know which end is up, so weary we misbehave. This is why his words of reproach soon become words of invitation and love. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

To take on the yoke of Jesus is to take on his life: to let our heart love like his.  Only by living and moving as one with him, will we find rest for our souls. +Amen.

The Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul, June 30, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Daniel Hansknecht, OHC

The Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul, June 30, 2026

• Ezekiel 34:11-16
• 2 Timothy 4:1-8
• John 21:15-19

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Almighty God, whose blessed apostles Peter and Paul glorified you by their martyrdom: Grant that your Church, instructed by their teaching and example, and knit together in unity by your Spirit, may ever stand firm upon the one foundation, which is Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
This prayer is a collect taken from our feast day breviary, used to conclude the proper offices for the Feast of Peter and Paul. It, to my mind, pretty succinctly describes why the Church celebrates these two figures, and how we continue to benefit from hearing their stories.
As leaders and teachers, Peter and Paul guided the first Christians through the turbulent and vulnerable early years of the Church’s existence. Their words and actions, as inspired by Jesus Christ and moved by the Holy Spirit, united the new group culturally and theologically; transforming them from a local Jewish sect into an international, multi-ethnic faith which could stand firm under its own strength. Their list of accomplishments is long, and books have literally been written to tell us about their lives, but there is one quality they both share that I would like to focus on: and that is leadership. What is the nature of leadership? How is it different today from the time of Peter and Paul? What characteristics should we look for in our leaders? And how can we act as leaders within our own spheres of influence?
I would personally say that leadership requires one to wear many hats. The first of these is to fill the role of guide and decision maker. Leaders often pick the direction a group will go as they plan for the future. The second is that of a cheerleader. Especially in small groups, leaders often need to inspire confidence, boost morale, and create a sense of unity amongst those who follow them. The third is that of a role model, exemplifying the group’s culture, values, and standards for behavior. And lastly, leaders often need to wear the hat of peacemaker, whether that be external diplomacy or internal conflict resolution.
The prophet Ezekiel showcases each of these nicely when God is said to be a shepherd: God brings the sheep to green pastures, God gathers the scattered sheep and unites them as a single flock, God exemplifies justice by strengthening the weak and destroying the strong, and God resolves the sheep’s metaphorical conflicts when binding up the injured. Way to go, God! I’d vote for you.
However, this prophetic proclamation didn’t come out of blue skies. God chose to announce this role for themself precisely because we were already failing at the job. Just a few verses earlier, Ezekiel calls out the misdoings of the false shepherds:
“The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: To the shepherds—thus says the Lord God: Woe, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat; you clothe yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatted calves, but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak; you have not healed the sick; you have not bound up the injured; you have not brought back the strays; you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and scattered - they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.” (Ezekiel 34:1-6)
To answer the question ‘How is leadership different today from the time of Peter and Paul?’, I would say: not so different. Like the famous quote from the Book of Ecclesiastes declares:
“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
Here, ‘nothing new’ describes both the needs of the people and how people act out when those needs aren’t met. As groups, protests form and revolutions are fomented. As individuals, strongmen shore up their insecurities by seeking power and unquestioned authority. Instead of false shepherds, we can call these defensive egos false leaders, and they continue to prey upon the vulnerable in our societies.
To a degree, even Paul foreshadows the present when he says, “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but… will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires…” That sounds to me remarkably like the effects of an echo chamber; one of the modern ways information is controlled and power is clung to.
Radically different, however, is how Jesus describes leadership: “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant” (Matthew 20:26). Supposedly, Robert K. Greenleaf coined the term “servant leadership” in 1970, but I think Jesus beat him to it.
Here within the Order of the Holy Cross, we recently elected a new Superior, and — a full year before the election — we began reflecting on the question of what qualities we wanted from our leadership. I’ve streamlined the list slightly for this sermon, and its contents fall largely into two categories: universal leadership attributes and religious Christian values. For the former, we wanted our Superior to be someone who is clear, consistent, calm, inclusive, organized administratively, personally integrated, trustworthy, and able to disagree with others while remaining in relationship with them. This half of the list reminds me strongly of the Scout Law.
For the latter, we wanted our Superior to be gospel grounded, open to the Spirit, a seeker of the face of God, and to have a pastoral presence. We also wished for them to cultivate ongoing formation, conversion, and kindness by sharing the spiritual riches of our theological and monastic heritage. And, for good measure, it wouldn’t hurt if their name was Jesus Christ.
All joking aside, heavy is the head which wears the crown, and this is a lot for one person to embody and live into. Jesus himself, I think, would agree with me. Simon son of John, do you love me more than these? Simon son of John, do you love me? Simon son of John, do you love me? Three times Peter is asked if he loves Jesus, and every time he says yes, Jesus then tells him where to direct that love.
This is an intentionally repetitive preamble for Peter’s call to leadership. Intentionally repetitive because loving, caring for, and leading others is an important responsibility which Jesus doesn’t want Peter to answer lightly. Nonchalance — a casual “Yeah, sure Jesus” — will only lead to broken hearts and avoidable suffering.
Of course, there are many degrees and scales to this responsibility, and many degrees to one’s success or failure in it. After all, not everyone is called to lead nations, nor is everyone bound to fail catastrophically. However, I believe that everyone has the potential to be called to care for their neighbor, to mentor the young, to speak out for the disenfranchised, or to otherwise feed the sheep in our lives. Paul solemnly urges us to also proclaim the message, teach with patience, and do the work of an evangelist. But, it should be enough that we “seek peace and pursue it” (Psalm 34:14) as the Psalmist writes.
Our Gospel concludes with one more instruction: “Follow me.” John is the only gospeler who doesn’t explicitly quote Jesus as saying, ‘take up your cross’, but given the context of Peter’s death, I would say this line means much the same. As was mentioned in our opening prayer, the martyrdom of these two saints is the culminating way in which they have impressed themselves on history. Although the cross once symbolized death, for us it symbolizes rebirth and new life. Here in the United States, we will soon be celebrating July 4^th, Independence Day, which can also be said to symbolize death and rebirth for us as a nation. To conclude things today, I’ve written a short prayer.
Let us pray:
Dear God, please look over and guide all the leaders in our lives. Let them be responsible stewards for the members of their flock. May they guide us to green pastures and clean waters. May they always be sober and help us to endure suffering. We pray for the leaders of our church, the leaders of our nation, our community organizers, our soccer coaches, our schoolteachers, and everyone in between. And should we be so called, may we too live out these prayers. In the name of your son our savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 8, June 28, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, June 28, 2026

Genesis 22:1-14

Romans 6:12-23

Matthew 10:40-42

Click here for an audio of the sermon

The desert monk Abba Poemen said: "Do not be always wanting everything to turn out as you think it should, but rather as God pleases, then you will be undisturbed and thankful in your prayer." 

Today’s reading from the Book of Genesis is one of the most famous and compelling, but also one of the most horrifying, and abhorrent stories in the Bible. The story is the culmination of a series of episodes in Abraham and Sarah’s life, beginning when God calls Abram to go from his country to the land that God will show him, and God promises that his descendants will be “a great nation,” and that in Abraham all the families of the earth will be blessed. Thus begins Abraham’s epic, with themes of descendants, inherited blessing, and trust. 

But there’s a dilemma- Abraham and Sarah are unable to have children. So, they hatch a plan to use Hagar, an enslaved Egyptian woman in their household, as a surrogate mother, and Ishmael is born. But then, Sarah miraculously gets pregnant and bears Isaac. And so, we get to the story we heard last week. For jealous, self-serving, greedy and likely racist reasons, Sarah wields her power over Hagar and Ishmael. She tells Abraham to get rid of them so that Ishmael would not have a share in the inheritance and Isaac alone would inherit God’s blessing. Nice. Abraham is distressed over this, but he gets over it pretty fast and says he is listening to God, who tells him to listen to Sarah and “send Hagar out”, meaning out to die in the desert! Abraham clearly can’t distinguish God’s voice from his own. And Sarah’s motive is not to do the will of God, but to see that God does hers! No worries, the story shows us how God’s plans are always perfect even when beyond our comprehension and carried out in spite of the chaos we manage to create in ourselves because of our blind self-interests.

The event exposes the mixed motives driving Abraham and Sarah at this point in the story. (And I’m sure we all can relate to mixed motives.) On the one hand, they have faith in God’s promise. They left their homeland of Ur for an unknown place. On the other hand, they maneuver to advance their legacy by excluding others, and by doing so dishonor the spirit of God’s larger goal that, through them and their legacy, “all the families of the earth shall be blessed”. In fact, it seems their scheme to use Hagar as a surrogate itself shows a lack of trust in God. It is an anxious attempt to take matters into their own hands. 

Isaac is now the sole means for their legacy, for the fulfillment of God’s promise, for the “great nation” to come, and ultimately, for God’s plan to bless “all the families of the earth.” And so, we get to today’s distressing episode. Both accounts are really written as a consecutive, parallel pair. When both stories are read together, one can easily see how the central drama is a kind of death march for one of Abraham’s children, with God saving the child at the last moment. Both stories circle around the themes of descendants, inherited blessing, and trust. And in both stories, divine promises are vindicated: God will make “a great nation” from Ishmael no less than from Isaac. God desires neither Ishmael nor Isaac to die. On the contrary, God protects them both, cares for them both, and fulfills promises to make them both ancestors of multitudes. Why then, one might ask, God’s command for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?

First, it’s important to understand that, as horrific as it sounds to our 21st Century western ears, the reality is that child sacrifice was a feature of ancient semitic devotion. For the Canaanites, Moabites, the people of Tirah, and other established civilizations in the Mediterranean Near East the custom would have been far from unknown. 

The very beginning of the story makes God’s purpose crystal clear: “After these things [meaning casting out Hagar and Ishmael and saying God told him it was OK] God tested Abraham”. The test echoes the ordeal he has put Hagar and Ishmael through. He sent Hagar out into the desert on a death march with her only child. Now he is the one who is walking on the death march of his other child. He attempted to cut off Hagar and Ishmael from inheriting the covenantal blessing. Now he will contemplate being cut off from the covenantal blessing by his own hand. If Isaac dies, Abraham will have no heir. The death of Isaac would mean the death of God’s promise that his descendants will become a great nation, and that Isaac will inherit God’s blessing- the inheritance Abraham and Sarah tried to hoard when they exiled Hagar and Ishmael. He manipulated for gain. Now he will face losing everything. He must choose between serving God and serving his own blind self-interests, between control and faith, between self-preservation and true love, which seeks to serve and to share, not to arrogate blessings to itself.

The story invites us to ask ourselves some fundamental questions about our relationship with God: 

What really drives my faith?  Confidence or fear, trust or anxiety, devotion or self-preservation. Do I really desire to serve God or serve myself using “faithful obedience” as a strategy for gain? All acts of “obedience” and “faith,” take place under a temptation to maneuver for gain- to obey in order to acquire an advantage.

The story makes it clear that God’s mercy always transcends mere punishment. Yes, there is accountability for what Abraham has done to Hagar and Ishmael, but more importantly there is a purging of manipulation and control necessary for a true strengthening of faith. In the end, Abraham’s faith and God’s promise are vindicated. God says to Abraham, “Now I know that you fear God.” Fearing God in this sense means regarding God with deep respect, reverence, and awe. 

In the evolution of human consciousness, the sacrificial instinct has to do with the deep recognition that something always has to die for something bigger to be born. From human sacrifice to animal sacrifice, human consciousness has gradually gotten closer to what really has to be sacrificed- our own ego! We will all find endless disguises and excuses to avoid letting go of what really needs to die for our own spiritual growth- our beloved passing self. It’s about developing the humility that finds strength in vulnerability. The vulnerability found when we accept our powerlessness, let go of our need for control, and truly believe and accept that God is in charge and has a plan much bigger and better than our ego’s plans. 

This is the vulnerability Jesus demands from his disciples when in today’s Gospel story he gives them instructions, not about extending welcome, as it may seem, but about receiving it, in his name. He sends his disciples to share the good news of God’s Reign as vulnerable outsiders. They had no religious institutions to back their efforts, or political tools to wield. And Jesus instructed them to carry nothing- no money, no food, no extra clothes. They had nothing at all, except the power of the Holy Spirit moving through them to heal and serve. Even the simplest, most basic need, a cup of cold water, would have to be met by others.   

The Desert Monastics taught that true peace can only be found by surrendering our own ego and will. They emphasized that inner transformation requires giving up the need to control. Again, Abba Poemen: "Do not be always wanting everything to turn out as you think it should, but rather as God pleases, then you will be undisturbed and thankful in your prayer." And Jesus said: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+