Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. William S. Bennett, n/OHC
Initial Profession - Br. Scott Wesley Borden - Friday 19 December 2003
The Scripture texts for the liturgy are those for the Feast of John and Charles Wesley, Isaiah 49:5-6 and Luke 9:2-6.
The hymns are all texts by Charles Wesley: "Christ whose glory fills the skies" to Ratisbon, "O thou who camest from above" to Hereford by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, "Love divine all loves excelling" to Hyfrydol, and "O for a thousand tongues to sing" to Azmon.
Scott, this is your last chance. We don't have to do this. And don't worry about filling up the time. By my count there are 14 more hymns by Charles Wesley and one by John in the hymnbook that did not make it into this service. If I stop preaching now, we might just be able to sing them all in the next hour! We'll have a good ol' hymn sing.
I jest but I wanted to call attention to how indebted our worship is to the brothers John and Charles Wesley. Their hymnody and preaching deeply enriched Anglican piety and praying and believing. Hymns perhaps more than any other medium inform our belief. The words sink deep into you, into the quiet place of the heart, even when you don't think you are paying attention…somewhat like the psalms we sing.
It is these two Anglican presbyters whom you honor today as you take their name as part of your name in religion, Scott Wesley. Their witness was to the living Christ in midst and to the power of his love. Through our worship we know and respond to this reality. For them the method of praying the daily office of the Book of Common Prayer and the regular reception of the Holy Communion were deeply formative. (They must be impressed by your commitment to the four-fold daily office-in their day it was but twice a day!)
Their presence in our midst in North America and England enlivened the Church to its call to proclaim the good news-except that the stodgy old Church of England couldn't find a way to be expansive enough and so to this day the Anglican Churches remain separated from their Methodist sisters and brothers. Would that all division cease!
We celebrate them this morning, for they represent the tradition in which you were raised-the tradition in which you came to know the living Christ and his love. They are your tradition, a part of what has been passed on to you and through you to make you who you are. It is part of what you bring to this community as you come to make your vow.
I am very conscious right now of tradition. It has come to signify a body of knowledge-"the tradition". We hear a lot about it these days. But actually, the tradition is only what we hand on from one to another, from the Latin traditio, literally "the delivery from one hand to another." We are given the good news. We hold it, we take it in, it remakes us, and we then pass it on to another and another. It is the handing on that makes it tradition, the handing on from one hand to another…a long line of people holding hands back to the beginning…that's the tradition…people in touch with each other.
I am conscious of tradition because you have chosen the most senior monk and the most junior monk (monk-in-training, actually) to take roles today's liturgy: Anthony Gerald as the president of the eucharistic assembly and me as preacher. We represent the handing on from one to another, from generation to generation, in this community.
It is a tradition that you have been standing in and being formed by for 2 ½ years and the tradition of Holy Cross joins all the other tradition in which you stand. What is to be your role among us as you stretch forth you hand in that great chain of connectedness?
Be one who dares to show forth the living Christ in our midst. In the words of John Wesley "trust in Christ, Christ alone." Let "Christ whose glory fills the skies,… fill [you] with radiancy divine". Let your obedience and stability lead you into conversion daily into the image of the Holy One whom we worship and adore.
What will it look like to have the living Christ at work in you? It will be "a flame of sacred love upon the altar of [your] heart". If you are the image of the Holy One, you will be filled with the love of Jesus-for Jesus and of Jesus.
And that love is active. Benedict in the rule says that through humble service to others we grow in the love of Jesus (cap. 35). The rule of the Founder is more explicit: "love must act as light must shine and fire must burn." That is more than a motto for sweatshirts and tote bags. It is a challenge. The "love of Jesus down in the heart" is no love unless it acts through the hands and feet and mind and speech in order to make a difference in a world where love is absent and mute. To love with the love of Christ means to touch others with his hands of comfort and healing and to weep with them his tears of sorrow and compassion. It also means loving the world enough to use the power of Jesus who cleansed the temple and climbed up upon the cross to defeat sin and death, using that same power to name and to change the structures of injustice and poverty, the structures of violence and war, the powers and principalities of this age.
Scott Wesley, hold out for nothing less than to be converted into the shining light and cleansing fire of Jesus' gentle and powerful love acting in this community and in this world.
And for the rest of us. Scott Wesley's monastic vow is the means by which he is called to live out his covenant of baptism in which he was united with Christ forever and reborn as his true image. We all share that baptismal covenant and what I pray for Scott Wesley today, I pray for us all-that we may be converted more and more into the image of the risen Jesus and be his love at work in this world, that in us and through us, Christ will "finish then [his] new creation" and we all be "changed from glory into glory".
Amen. Come Lord Jesus.
Friday, December 19, 2003
Monday, December 8, 2003
BCP - Christmas C - 24 Dec 2003
Luke 2: 1-20
Good evening and welcome to Holy Cross Monastery. And thank you from the entire Holy Cross community to each of you for sharing your Christmas with us. I know that many of you think you are receiving a gift by being here - the truth is that you are also giving a gift by your presence. But I'll come back to that.
Christmas is a season filled with gifts, with joy and good cheer. So the gift of your being here is a part of the essence of the season.
Christmas is much more than just a season of joy, or peace, or good will toward all. It is more, even, than just the time when we remember the coming of our savior. Christmas is much more complicated - for not only is there great beauty and infinite hope in the Christmas season, the beauty is complemented by ugliness and the hope is accompanied by sorrow. The beauty of a newborn child is accompanied by the ugliness of poverty - of being forced to stay in a barn. The hope of the savior is accompanied by the ugliness of pending crucifixion.
We heard a few minutes ago Luke's telling of the Nativity of Christ. But there are a couple of things that make it a bit difficult for us to really hear Luke.
First, when we are listening to Luke, Matthew has a way of standing behind us and whispering in our ear. While Luke is telling us about shepherds, Matthew is reminding us that in a few days we can also expect Kings. But Luke never tells us about Kings - or Magi or whatever they may have been.
And it isn't just Matthew - when I think of that night in the stable long ago its almost impossible for me to do so without Christina Rossetti telling me what a bleak and snowy winter night it was - in the bleak midwinter long ago... though Luke gives us no weather report.
What Luke chooses to tell us, and what he chooses to leave out is critical to hearing Luke. And what we want tonight is Luke, the whole Luke, and nothing but Luke.
Second, it is hard for us in this day and age not to hear Luke as though he were a journalist. We can be lulled into thinking we're hearing a news story - Dateline: Bethlehem. Headline: Savior Born. And then he starts filling in the details - Cesar Augustus, Quirinius, Herod the King (Herod didn't make it into tonight's Gospel reading, but if we had started a bit earlier he would have been there). Hotels full. Savior born in barn. Animals watch. Shepherds visit. Order is restored. Film and details at eleven.
But Luke is not a journalist and the Gospel may be good news, but its not a news story.
Scholars have struggled for years with Luke's facts because, for example, This particular Cesar, Quirinius, and this particular Herod were not all in office at the same time. There is doubt about the census, and about the need to return to your home town for the purpose of a census. Some scholars develop rather complicated rationalizations for how Luke's facts can be correct. Others excuse him by noting he was writing a long time after the fact and probably just confused some details.
But we're listening for what Luke may be trying to tell us - as an evangelist, not as a journalist.
Maybe Luke is fully aware that these three leaders were not in power at the same time. Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he is winking just a bit as he writes. Perhaps it is the modern equivalent of saying - "it came to pass when Ronald Reagan was President and Al Gore was Vice President..."
Because maybe Luke is telling us that it doesn't matter who was in office - when or where. The important thing, the thing that does matter, is that these great rulers were not at the stable in Bethlehem on the night in question. The savior of the world is made flesh and the most powerful people in the world are not on hand. The powerful people are not God's agents in this process. They are, more or less, irrelevant... out of the picture... It doesn't even matter if we get their names right...
And who is there? Who is relevant? Who does matter? Joseph and Mary, and a group of shepherds.
We have a very romantic view of shepherds. If we substituted words like cowboys, or ranch hands, or migrant farm workers, for shepherds, we might be getting closer to the reality. Shepherds were dirty, rough, uneducated. They were desperately poor. They were beyond the margin of society.
So the savior comes. The rich and powerful are off being rich and powerful. The poor and marginalized are there, praising God. Already Luke is establishing the special relationship that Jesus has with the poor, the un-empowered.
Luke also tells us about the animals - or at least about their stable. Only Luke. Why is Luke telling us this?
Jesus comes to bring salvation. Polite society, the good folks at the Inn, can't even find space for Jesus - can't make room for him. But the animals can make room for him and share their manger - literally share their table with the infant Jesus. This is table fellowship of a sort - the infant Jesus - with the animals.
As we come to the table in just a little while, are we more like those animals, or those folks at the inn?
The animals, we need to remind ourselves, are works of God's creation no less that are we. This is their creator, their God incarnate, no less than ours. O Magnum Mysterium et admirabile sacramentum says the ancient song - what a great mystery and sacred thing, that animals were there to watch the newborn savior lying in their manger. The animals aren't sweet decorative set dressing. They belong - just as the shepherds belong - just as we belong.
So what is Luke saying to us here and now as we remember the coming of Christ into the world? What sacred power does this great mystery hold?
Christ comes to us not in the midst of the rich and powerful, but in the midst of the margins. If we are looking for Presidents and Kings to lead the world to peace and justice - to lead the world to the kingdom of God, we're looking in the wrong place.
We need to look to ourselves and to the persons sitting to our left and to our right - and we need to do so in humility. Jesus comes to us in the stables of our hearts, not in the palaces of our minds. We must respond as did the shepherds.
We may not be as simple as the animals, nor as poor and marginalized as the shepherds, but we are most likely not as rich and powerful as Herod, Quirinius, or our modern-day Kings and Presidents. And, much more importantly, we are here - at the manger - on this night.
Luke's shepherds don't come with fabulous gifts - unlike Matthew's Kings. No gold, frankincense or myrrh. They come plain as they are - to worship. That is their gift - the only gift they can possibly offer. They worship. And that is the same gift we give in our presence here tonight. You see - I said at the beginning that your being here was a gift... It is the gift we give every time we worship.
And so we cry out, as did those shepherds, glory to God in the highest, and on earth - peace. Amen.
Br. Scott Wesley, OHC
Good evening and welcome to Holy Cross Monastery. And thank you from the entire Holy Cross community to each of you for sharing your Christmas with us. I know that many of you think you are receiving a gift by being here - the truth is that you are also giving a gift by your presence. But I'll come back to that.
Christmas is a season filled with gifts, with joy and good cheer. So the gift of your being here is a part of the essence of the season.
Christmas is much more than just a season of joy, or peace, or good will toward all. It is more, even, than just the time when we remember the coming of our savior. Christmas is much more complicated - for not only is there great beauty and infinite hope in the Christmas season, the beauty is complemented by ugliness and the hope is accompanied by sorrow. The beauty of a newborn child is accompanied by the ugliness of poverty - of being forced to stay in a barn. The hope of the savior is accompanied by the ugliness of pending crucifixion.
We heard a few minutes ago Luke's telling of the Nativity of Christ. But there are a couple of things that make it a bit difficult for us to really hear Luke.
First, when we are listening to Luke, Matthew has a way of standing behind us and whispering in our ear. While Luke is telling us about shepherds, Matthew is reminding us that in a few days we can also expect Kings. But Luke never tells us about Kings - or Magi or whatever they may have been.
And it isn't just Matthew - when I think of that night in the stable long ago its almost impossible for me to do so without Christina Rossetti telling me what a bleak and snowy winter night it was - in the bleak midwinter long ago... though Luke gives us no weather report.
What Luke chooses to tell us, and what he chooses to leave out is critical to hearing Luke. And what we want tonight is Luke, the whole Luke, and nothing but Luke.
Second, it is hard for us in this day and age not to hear Luke as though he were a journalist. We can be lulled into thinking we're hearing a news story - Dateline: Bethlehem. Headline: Savior Born. And then he starts filling in the details - Cesar Augustus, Quirinius, Herod the King (Herod didn't make it into tonight's Gospel reading, but if we had started a bit earlier he would have been there). Hotels full. Savior born in barn. Animals watch. Shepherds visit. Order is restored. Film and details at eleven.
But Luke is not a journalist and the Gospel may be good news, but its not a news story.
Scholars have struggled for years with Luke's facts because, for example, This particular Cesar, Quirinius, and this particular Herod were not all in office at the same time. There is doubt about the census, and about the need to return to your home town for the purpose of a census. Some scholars develop rather complicated rationalizations for how Luke's facts can be correct. Others excuse him by noting he was writing a long time after the fact and probably just confused some details.
But we're listening for what Luke may be trying to tell us - as an evangelist, not as a journalist.
Maybe Luke is fully aware that these three leaders were not in power at the same time. Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he is winking just a bit as he writes. Perhaps it is the modern equivalent of saying - "it came to pass when Ronald Reagan was President and Al Gore was Vice President..."
Because maybe Luke is telling us that it doesn't matter who was in office - when or where. The important thing, the thing that does matter, is that these great rulers were not at the stable in Bethlehem on the night in question. The savior of the world is made flesh and the most powerful people in the world are not on hand. The powerful people are not God's agents in this process. They are, more or less, irrelevant... out of the picture... It doesn't even matter if we get their names right...
And who is there? Who is relevant? Who does matter? Joseph and Mary, and a group of shepherds.
We have a very romantic view of shepherds. If we substituted words like cowboys, or ranch hands, or migrant farm workers, for shepherds, we might be getting closer to the reality. Shepherds were dirty, rough, uneducated. They were desperately poor. They were beyond the margin of society.
So the savior comes. The rich and powerful are off being rich and powerful. The poor and marginalized are there, praising God. Already Luke is establishing the special relationship that Jesus has with the poor, the un-empowered.
Luke also tells us about the animals - or at least about their stable. Only Luke. Why is Luke telling us this?
Jesus comes to bring salvation. Polite society, the good folks at the Inn, can't even find space for Jesus - can't make room for him. But the animals can make room for him and share their manger - literally share their table with the infant Jesus. This is table fellowship of a sort - the infant Jesus - with the animals.
As we come to the table in just a little while, are we more like those animals, or those folks at the inn?
The animals, we need to remind ourselves, are works of God's creation no less that are we. This is their creator, their God incarnate, no less than ours. O Magnum Mysterium et admirabile sacramentum says the ancient song - what a great mystery and sacred thing, that animals were there to watch the newborn savior lying in their manger. The animals aren't sweet decorative set dressing. They belong - just as the shepherds belong - just as we belong.
So what is Luke saying to us here and now as we remember the coming of Christ into the world? What sacred power does this great mystery hold?
Christ comes to us not in the midst of the rich and powerful, but in the midst of the margins. If we are looking for Presidents and Kings to lead the world to peace and justice - to lead the world to the kingdom of God, we're looking in the wrong place.
We need to look to ourselves and to the persons sitting to our left and to our right - and we need to do so in humility. Jesus comes to us in the stables of our hearts, not in the palaces of our minds. We must respond as did the shepherds.
We may not be as simple as the animals, nor as poor and marginalized as the shepherds, but we are most likely not as rich and powerful as Herod, Quirinius, or our modern-day Kings and Presidents. And, much more importantly, we are here - at the manger - on this night.
Luke's shepherds don't come with fabulous gifts - unlike Matthew's Kings. No gold, frankincense or myrrh. They come plain as they are - to worship. That is their gift - the only gift they can possibly offer. They worship. And that is the same gift we give in our presence here tonight. You see - I said at the beginning that your being here was a gift... It is the gift we give every time we worship.
And so we cry out, as did those shepherds, glory to God in the highest, and on earth - peace. Amen.
Br. Scott Wesley, OHC
Sunday, November 2, 2003
BCP - Proper 26 B - 02 Nov 2003
Sermon for November 2 (Proper 26 B)
Lectionary Readings
Deuteronomy 6: 1-9
Hebrews 7: 23-28
Mark 12: 28-34
This is an interesting day in the life of the Church, particularly in our own Anglican Communion, and especially close to home in our very own Episcopal Church USA.
For today, tucked as it is between our observance of All Saints and All Souls days, is the day Canon Gene Robinson is being ordained Bishop - an act that some view as very healing and others view as extremely hurtful. On this day which the Lord has made, a mortal wound may be delivered to our Church. Or a period of destructive dishonesty may be one step closer to ending. Or we may be able to observe, as King George of England did on July 4, 1776, that nothing of any great importance happened on this day.
We will really only know today's importance some time in the future. For the present all we can know is that some people are experiencing it with great joy and others with great sorrow.
But it strikes me as a most intriguing coincidence that today the lectionary puts before us the Summary of the Law - the ancient creed of the Synogogue. The Anglican Church of Canada describes Hear O Israel, this morning's Gospel reading, as the compliment to the Apostles Creed. The Apostles Creed is the faith of the church as teaching, Hear O Israel is the faith of the church as action.
"Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." And "You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."
The coincidence, in my mind, is that on this day when we are being reminded that the absolute primary action of our faith is love, we are also being reminded that the love relationship Gene Robinson has with another man is, to some, unacceptable within the body of Christ. It would appear for these people that Gene Robinson has two options: He is either not to love with his all his heart, his soul, his mind, and his strength. Or he is not to love himself and others as he loves God and as God loves him...
If Here O Israel is the creed of our faith as action, then it is certainly worth spending a bit of time figuring out what this word LOVE really means...
We live in a world heavily infused by popular culture - even here in the Monastery... so I spent some time meditating on what our pop culture has to say about love.
Pop culture seems to have much to say - particularly in popular music. All we need is love. Love is a many splendored thing. Love means never having to say you're sorry. Our love is here to stay. Can't help loving that man of mine. Love me tender, love me true. If you're asking do I love you this much, well baby I do. If loving you is bad, I don't want to be good. Love the one you're with. You don't know what its like to love somebody the way I love you. Some times love don't feel like it should. Love stinks. You always hurt the one you love... The world has had enough of silly love songs.
On closer inspection, pop music doesn't have that much to say about love... it just uses the word a lot.
We can go through the maze of self-help and pop psychology as well, but all the insights into tough love and co-dependence and other relationship issues don't shed much light on Godly love - though they do offer help to worried parents and angry teens.
When pop culture and pop psychology fail us, the next obvious place to look is the bible... which does not let us down - it has a tremendous amount to say about love.
Love, if love be perfect, casts out fear. No one has greater love than this; to lay down one's life for a friend. Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. If we love one another, God abides in us. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; love is not irritable or resentful; love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
The poetry with which the bible speaks of love is just too powerful for pop songs. And the phrase "unconditional positive regard" is left miles behind "love bears all things, endures all things."
The Church, the mystical body of Christ, is a body made of love - not of our love for God or our love for each other - but of Godly Love, God's love for us. We don't get to say who God does or does not love. All God's creatures have a place.
It's madness of a sort. It's a mess. It's cluttered, noisy, beyond our comprehension. It's Christ's mystical body, into which we are invited; not our mystical body into which we invite Christ.
Those of us who are not in 12 step programs are, I am often reminded, deprived of a great source of learning and wisdom. And one of those pieces of wisdom that a member of our community shared with me recently was that he had to learn not to try to protect his AA group from alcoholics. It's a piece of wisdom that is startling in its simple clarity. When we love something, we seek to protect it - to keep it whole, to keep it pure. And sometimes that is exactly the wrong instinct.
Sometimes our instinct is to try to protect the Church, the mystical body of Christ, from those who might defile it - from sinners. But that is not love - love bears all, believes all, hopes all, endures all. It is fear - fear that our beloved Church will be damaged. Perfect love has no place for fear. And frankly, we are all sinners, all unworthy. We all defile the mystical body of Christ.
We can be eternally thankful that God's love is without condition. We can all be thankful that we don't have to be worthy of God's love before we are worthy of a place in God's church. Loving God, loving God's mystical body, means bearing, believing, hoping, enduring. Not judging, not fearing, not protecting, not saving.
When we love God with our whole hearts and souls and minds and strength, and when we love ourselves and our neighbors, than God's Kingdom is not far off.
Let us pray: God of love, fill our hearts with love so that our fears may be cast out and we may love ourselves and each other as you love us.
Br. Scott, n/OHC
© 2003 Holy Cross Monastery
Lectionary Readings
Deuteronomy 6: 1-9
Hebrews 7: 23-28
Mark 12: 28-34
This is an interesting day in the life of the Church, particularly in our own Anglican Communion, and especially close to home in our very own Episcopal Church USA.
For today, tucked as it is between our observance of All Saints and All Souls days, is the day Canon Gene Robinson is being ordained Bishop - an act that some view as very healing and others view as extremely hurtful. On this day which the Lord has made, a mortal wound may be delivered to our Church. Or a period of destructive dishonesty may be one step closer to ending. Or we may be able to observe, as King George of England did on July 4, 1776, that nothing of any great importance happened on this day.
We will really only know today's importance some time in the future. For the present all we can know is that some people are experiencing it with great joy and others with great sorrow.
But it strikes me as a most intriguing coincidence that today the lectionary puts before us the Summary of the Law - the ancient creed of the Synogogue. The Anglican Church of Canada describes Hear O Israel, this morning's Gospel reading, as the compliment to the Apostles Creed. The Apostles Creed is the faith of the church as teaching, Hear O Israel is the faith of the church as action.
"Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." And "You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."
The coincidence, in my mind, is that on this day when we are being reminded that the absolute primary action of our faith is love, we are also being reminded that the love relationship Gene Robinson has with another man is, to some, unacceptable within the body of Christ. It would appear for these people that Gene Robinson has two options: He is either not to love with his all his heart, his soul, his mind, and his strength. Or he is not to love himself and others as he loves God and as God loves him...
If Here O Israel is the creed of our faith as action, then it is certainly worth spending a bit of time figuring out what this word LOVE really means...
We live in a world heavily infused by popular culture - even here in the Monastery... so I spent some time meditating on what our pop culture has to say about love.
Pop culture seems to have much to say - particularly in popular music. All we need is love. Love is a many splendored thing. Love means never having to say you're sorry. Our love is here to stay. Can't help loving that man of mine. Love me tender, love me true. If you're asking do I love you this much, well baby I do. If loving you is bad, I don't want to be good. Love the one you're with. You don't know what its like to love somebody the way I love you. Some times love don't feel like it should. Love stinks. You always hurt the one you love... The world has had enough of silly love songs.
On closer inspection, pop music doesn't have that much to say about love... it just uses the word a lot.
We can go through the maze of self-help and pop psychology as well, but all the insights into tough love and co-dependence and other relationship issues don't shed much light on Godly love - though they do offer help to worried parents and angry teens.
When pop culture and pop psychology fail us, the next obvious place to look is the bible... which does not let us down - it has a tremendous amount to say about love.
Love, if love be perfect, casts out fear. No one has greater love than this; to lay down one's life for a friend. Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. If we love one another, God abides in us. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; love is not irritable or resentful; love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
The poetry with which the bible speaks of love is just too powerful for pop songs. And the phrase "unconditional positive regard" is left miles behind "love bears all things, endures all things."
The Church, the mystical body of Christ, is a body made of love - not of our love for God or our love for each other - but of Godly Love, God's love for us. We don't get to say who God does or does not love. All God's creatures have a place.
It's madness of a sort. It's a mess. It's cluttered, noisy, beyond our comprehension. It's Christ's mystical body, into which we are invited; not our mystical body into which we invite Christ.
Those of us who are not in 12 step programs are, I am often reminded, deprived of a great source of learning and wisdom. And one of those pieces of wisdom that a member of our community shared with me recently was that he had to learn not to try to protect his AA group from alcoholics. It's a piece of wisdom that is startling in its simple clarity. When we love something, we seek to protect it - to keep it whole, to keep it pure. And sometimes that is exactly the wrong instinct.
Sometimes our instinct is to try to protect the Church, the mystical body of Christ, from those who might defile it - from sinners. But that is not love - love bears all, believes all, hopes all, endures all. It is fear - fear that our beloved Church will be damaged. Perfect love has no place for fear. And frankly, we are all sinners, all unworthy. We all defile the mystical body of Christ.
We can be eternally thankful that God's love is without condition. We can all be thankful that we don't have to be worthy of God's love before we are worthy of a place in God's church. Loving God, loving God's mystical body, means bearing, believing, hoping, enduring. Not judging, not fearing, not protecting, not saving.
When we love God with our whole hearts and souls and minds and strength, and when we love ourselves and our neighbors, than God's Kingdom is not far off.
Let us pray: God of love, fill our hearts with love so that our fears may be cast out and we may love ourselves and each other as you love us.
Br. Scott, n/OHC
© 2003 Holy Cross Monastery
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
BCP - Proper 23 A - 15 Oct 2003
October 15 - Proper 23 A - Season After Pentecost
Lectionary Reading
Matthew 22:1-14
Today's Gospel tells us a wonderful parable - simple, direct and to the point. But lets review anyway…
God throws a party - a wedding party to be specific. A wedding party puts us in mind of Jesus - the bridegroom.
And God invites the "A" list of guests. This will be a great party and all the right people will be there. Except there is a problem… The "A" list people decide God's little party is not quite the social event of the season. In fact they decide it's completely miss-able.
Which is good news for us - since we're the "B" list. And we don't need to be asked twice! Off we go to the party and we have a blast. Except for that looser guy who gets bounced. But we'll come back to him…
The obvious interpretation is that the "A" list is Israel and the "B" list Christians. God's chosen people refused the party, ignored the profits and John the Baptist, and executed Jesus. We embraced Jesus and came to the party. Story over - we can all go home… our eternal home in Heaven, that is. Salvation is ours. End of story.
But - not so fast. There are really two distinct cautionary tales in this Gospel and we need to hear both of them.
First - it might have been helpful 2000 years ago to think of this as a story about Jews and Christians. But over the years we have, at least subliminally - and at times really very explicitly - begun to think of ourselves as God's chosen people, the new Israel, the new "A" list.
Especially in the United States… We are inconceivably rich, powerful beyond measure, we have an economic system that is the envy of the world, and a justice system that, for all its flaws, really does provide an admirable measure of justice for the poor and powerless. Its tough not to feel just a bit smug, just a bit like the "A" list, when God is clearly smiling on our country.
So we need to pay attention to the cautionary tale of the "A" list people.
Most of them blew off God's party for understandable reasons. They had businesses to run, enemies to defend against, crops to harvest, important matters to sort out.
Any parallels for us? We have armies to maintain, weapons systems to build, regimes to change, economies to tend, fortunes to be made on Wall Street.
We'd love to live in peace and unity with all of God's children, but Capitalism only truly works when you can win it all. And for someone to win it all, someone else must loose it all. The "have nots" are just as important in our economic equation as the "haves." Economic injustice is just one one example of our human structure that keeps us away from God's party.
So… sorry God - we'd like to come to your party… We're sure the Kingdom is a really great. We'll get there eventually. But not right now. We want to build a newer and bigger home, get a bigger car; We've got Sadam Husein to worry about and September 11th to avenge. Our economy is in trouble and we need to keep oil flowing. We're sure its a very lovely party, though… Please, God, accept our regrets.
Moreover, it is very tempting and remarkably easy to start to understand our will as God's will. If we could examine the hearts of the "A" list guests in today's parable, we'd probably find that most them weren't bad people trying to do bad things - though, to be sure, a few of them were. We'd probably find that they were good, decent, hardworking people who thought they were doing God's will by tending to their own concerns.
This is the first cautionary tale and it is one that we in the first world need to hear again and again.
I promised you two cautionary tales and there is one more detail that I said we'd come back to…Remember that guy who got kicked out? What's up with him?
This is a detail of the parable that has always bothered me. This poor guy gets dragged off the street with no warning to come to a party. And then he gets yelled at because he isn't dressed properly. It seems really unfair, very "old testament." And the punishment, being sent more or less to hell, is really way out of proportion to his crime, not having appropriate attire.
Well I don't think a fashion faux pas is really the issue. I bet if we could peer into his heart we'd find that he only came to the party for the food… or the wine… or because he was curious and just wanted to watch… or he was bored. Or he didn't have anywhere else to be so why not follow the crowd…
I think he is the inverse of the "A" list crowd. They stayed away for poor reasons. He came for poor reasons. He might have been physically at the party, but I suspect he wasn't really present at the party - just going through the motions.
And so here is the second cautionary tale: When we do decide to come to God's party are we really completely going to the party? Are we truly being present? Are we letting our hair down? Or are we going through the motions?
I know somebody, a salesman by trade, who goes to Eucharist pretty much every Sunday because, as he says, "it can't hurt and it just might help." Selling things is his whole life. He lives to "ink" contracts. He believes that its just possible that going to Eucharist might improve the odds of another contract being inked. When he comes to the God's Eucharistic party it isn't as a form of surrender - it's a form of control. He's dressed for manipulation rather than for a party.
And while I'm wondering about him, guess what? I'm not present at the party either. If I've really lost myself at this party, I'm no longer really interested in judging the other guy. And when I am judging the other person, my ego is still firmly in control. I'm wearing my own garments of control.
Now I don't think coming to God's party means being stupid or ignorant. I don't think it means just letting go and accepting that whatever will be will be. It's pretty safe to say that at God's party we won't just get drunk and roll around together.
God has given us some rules of etiquette and through prayer, scripture, community life, and our own God-given intellect, we can begin to know and live in God's way.
Jesus summed up those rules in about two sentences: We are to love God fully, completely, totally, and without reservations. And we are to love other people as much as we love ourselves. And, as James Huntington, our founder, said so beautifully, love must act. So really going to God's party involves loving God and acting on that love; nothing more, nothing less…
Acting on our love of God, our selves and other people can probably take infinite forms. It may mean living and working with the poor. It might be the ministry of 12 step programs where healing of self and of others are so thoroughly bound together. It might mean taking the time to go sit with a lonely senior citizen, or providing bodily comfort through the healing touch of massage, or providing sanctuary for animals, or all of the above and more.
Being really present at God's party involves acting on behalf of justice and mercy. It means treating our selves and all of God's creation with respect.
Ultimately, being at God's party means not protecting our own interests, but giving away our very lives.
So when and where is God's party. It is not next weekend, or next month, or next season… God's party is here and now and always and at all times. Going to God's party is a process - we do it one day at a time.
Almighty and loving God - divine party planner - help us to hear your invitation, accept your invitation and live your invitation by joining completely in your heavenly dance.
Br. Scott Borden, n/OHC
Lectionary Reading
Matthew 22:1-14
Today's Gospel tells us a wonderful parable - simple, direct and to the point. But lets review anyway…
God throws a party - a wedding party to be specific. A wedding party puts us in mind of Jesus - the bridegroom.
And God invites the "A" list of guests. This will be a great party and all the right people will be there. Except there is a problem… The "A" list people decide God's little party is not quite the social event of the season. In fact they decide it's completely miss-able.
Which is good news for us - since we're the "B" list. And we don't need to be asked twice! Off we go to the party and we have a blast. Except for that looser guy who gets bounced. But we'll come back to him…
The obvious interpretation is that the "A" list is Israel and the "B" list Christians. God's chosen people refused the party, ignored the profits and John the Baptist, and executed Jesus. We embraced Jesus and came to the party. Story over - we can all go home… our eternal home in Heaven, that is. Salvation is ours. End of story.
But - not so fast. There are really two distinct cautionary tales in this Gospel and we need to hear both of them.
First - it might have been helpful 2000 years ago to think of this as a story about Jews and Christians. But over the years we have, at least subliminally - and at times really very explicitly - begun to think of ourselves as God's chosen people, the new Israel, the new "A" list.
Especially in the United States… We are inconceivably rich, powerful beyond measure, we have an economic system that is the envy of the world, and a justice system that, for all its flaws, really does provide an admirable measure of justice for the poor and powerless. Its tough not to feel just a bit smug, just a bit like the "A" list, when God is clearly smiling on our country.
So we need to pay attention to the cautionary tale of the "A" list people.
Most of them blew off God's party for understandable reasons. They had businesses to run, enemies to defend against, crops to harvest, important matters to sort out.
Any parallels for us? We have armies to maintain, weapons systems to build, regimes to change, economies to tend, fortunes to be made on Wall Street.
We'd love to live in peace and unity with all of God's children, but Capitalism only truly works when you can win it all. And for someone to win it all, someone else must loose it all. The "have nots" are just as important in our economic equation as the "haves." Economic injustice is just one one example of our human structure that keeps us away from God's party.
So… sorry God - we'd like to come to your party… We're sure the Kingdom is a really great. We'll get there eventually. But not right now. We want to build a newer and bigger home, get a bigger car; We've got Sadam Husein to worry about and September 11th to avenge. Our economy is in trouble and we need to keep oil flowing. We're sure its a very lovely party, though… Please, God, accept our regrets.
Moreover, it is very tempting and remarkably easy to start to understand our will as God's will. If we could examine the hearts of the "A" list guests in today's parable, we'd probably find that most them weren't bad people trying to do bad things - though, to be sure, a few of them were. We'd probably find that they were good, decent, hardworking people who thought they were doing God's will by tending to their own concerns.
This is the first cautionary tale and it is one that we in the first world need to hear again and again.
I promised you two cautionary tales and there is one more detail that I said we'd come back to…Remember that guy who got kicked out? What's up with him?
This is a detail of the parable that has always bothered me. This poor guy gets dragged off the street with no warning to come to a party. And then he gets yelled at because he isn't dressed properly. It seems really unfair, very "old testament." And the punishment, being sent more or less to hell, is really way out of proportion to his crime, not having appropriate attire.
Well I don't think a fashion faux pas is really the issue. I bet if we could peer into his heart we'd find that he only came to the party for the food… or the wine… or because he was curious and just wanted to watch… or he was bored. Or he didn't have anywhere else to be so why not follow the crowd…
I think he is the inverse of the "A" list crowd. They stayed away for poor reasons. He came for poor reasons. He might have been physically at the party, but I suspect he wasn't really present at the party - just going through the motions.
And so here is the second cautionary tale: When we do decide to come to God's party are we really completely going to the party? Are we truly being present? Are we letting our hair down? Or are we going through the motions?
I know somebody, a salesman by trade, who goes to Eucharist pretty much every Sunday because, as he says, "it can't hurt and it just might help." Selling things is his whole life. He lives to "ink" contracts. He believes that its just possible that going to Eucharist might improve the odds of another contract being inked. When he comes to the God's Eucharistic party it isn't as a form of surrender - it's a form of control. He's dressed for manipulation rather than for a party.
And while I'm wondering about him, guess what? I'm not present at the party either. If I've really lost myself at this party, I'm no longer really interested in judging the other guy. And when I am judging the other person, my ego is still firmly in control. I'm wearing my own garments of control.
Now I don't think coming to God's party means being stupid or ignorant. I don't think it means just letting go and accepting that whatever will be will be. It's pretty safe to say that at God's party we won't just get drunk and roll around together.
God has given us some rules of etiquette and through prayer, scripture, community life, and our own God-given intellect, we can begin to know and live in God's way.
Jesus summed up those rules in about two sentences: We are to love God fully, completely, totally, and without reservations. And we are to love other people as much as we love ourselves. And, as James Huntington, our founder, said so beautifully, love must act. So really going to God's party involves loving God and acting on that love; nothing more, nothing less…
Acting on our love of God, our selves and other people can probably take infinite forms. It may mean living and working with the poor. It might be the ministry of 12 step programs where healing of self and of others are so thoroughly bound together. It might mean taking the time to go sit with a lonely senior citizen, or providing bodily comfort through the healing touch of massage, or providing sanctuary for animals, or all of the above and more.
Being really present at God's party involves acting on behalf of justice and mercy. It means treating our selves and all of God's creation with respect.
Ultimately, being at God's party means not protecting our own interests, but giving away our very lives.
So when and where is God's party. It is not next weekend, or next month, or next season… God's party is here and now and always and at all times. Going to God's party is a process - we do it one day at a time.
Almighty and loving God - divine party planner - help us to hear your invitation, accept your invitation and live your invitation by joining completely in your heavenly dance.
Br. Scott Borden, n/OHC
Sunday, October 5, 2003
BCP - Proper 22 B - Oct 2003
Sermons at Holy Cross
October 5, 2003 (PROPER 22 B) - Pentecost 17,
Scripture Readings for October 5th:
Genesis 2:18-24, Psalm 8, Hebrews 2:1-18, Mark 10:2-12:
Today's Gospel lesson is one that demands close attention. It requires us to look at its context. And I ask you to bear with me as we do that. It, also, requires us to look at its apparent teaching on divorce and the Church's current practice. Finally, it points us to the wide expanse of God's creative love, and away from the narrow strictures of legalism.
"Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?'"
This question which seems to require only a "yes or no" answer was anything but straight-forward. There was a rigorous debate going on among the Pharisees themselves as to the proper answer to this question and the questioners wanted Jesus to side with one party or another. Remnants of the debate can still be read in the Talmud, the collection of commentaries on the law of Israel. There we see that while the husband's right to a divorce had always been admitted and was sanctioned by the Torah, three schools of legal interpretation had emerged by Jesus' time. The governing Torah text was in Deuteronomy 24:1 (using the literal Schocken translation which has not been smoothed over by the translation tradition) - it reads: "When a man takes-in-marriage a woman and espouses her, and it happens: if she does not find favor in his eyes-for he finds in her something of nakedness-he may write for her a Document of Cutoff (Get)."(The Schocken Bible, Vol 1: The Five Books of Moses, New York: Schocken Books, 1995).
Given a text like that it is no wonder that competing schools of interpretation arose.
Rabbi Shammai, who often took the strict, literal view, and his disciples argued that while the man's right to divorce was absolute, it should not be exercised except in the case of nakedness which he interpreted as moral misconduct by the wife. The school following his contemporary and opponent, Rabbi Hillel, the more liberal, that is to say less literal authority, argued that the restricting clause "for he finds in her something of nakedness" was unintelligible and must be ignored. Therefore, divorce was allowable if the husband "did not find favor with the wife", and Hillel deemed her incompetence as a housekeeper to be sufficient grounds. A third camp, later to be headed after Jesus' period by Rabbi Akiba, argued even more liberally that divorce was to be allowed whenever a marriage fails to provide a basis for happiness-for the husband. You might have noticed that on no occasion could the wife divorce her husband for these or any reason.
The attempt by the questioners is to draw Jesus into taking sides in a debate among the rabbis. Given the options, he rejects them all. He says that the provision for divorce was granted because of human hardness of heart, our inability to live into the heart of God's desire. In this response Jesus implicitly rejects the current state of the debate and along with it the husband's absolute moral right for a divorce. Rather he points the questioners back toward creation and God's intention for humanity.
One of the problems with divorce under the law of Israel during Jesus' time was that there was no provision for the divorced wife. She could remarry legally, but it was unlikely that anyone would marry her. Her family were unlikely to take her back in her disgrace and she often ended up homeless, in poverty, reduced in many cases to prostitution. Jesus' limitation on the husband's right to divorce is often seen as a way of protecting women from abandonment by their husbands.
The rabbis were debating only marriage in accordance with the civil law of Israel. There was another type of marriage and divorce in 1st century Palestine: that of the law of the Greek-speaking part of the Roman Empire. Under this law, divorce was more readily obtainable and in many cases prominent women had asserted the right to divorce their husbands on any grounds. And remarriage was easily accomplished.
There had been two rather famous divorces in Palestine and everybody knew about them. Herod Antipas, the ruler of the Galilee and son of King Herod of the nativity stories, had divorced his wife. Simultaneously, Herodias, the wife of his brother Herod Philip, had divorced Philip. And then Antipas and Herodias, brother- and sister-in-law, had married each other-an action totally outside the bounds of what was allowed under Jewish law. The marriage would only have been possible if Philip had died without an heir.
Jesus' cousin, John the Baptizer had spoken out against this scandalous behavior among those who purported to be rulers of Jews. He had said to Antipas: "It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife." And fearful of the Baptizer's public criticism, Herodias and her daughter Salome and Antipas, silenced him by beheading him.
Jesus' questioners, then, are putting him on the spot, not only in the debate among the rabbis, but also in the larger political context. His cousin John is already dead. Answering these questions could well put Jesus in peril...but he answers and his answer, as we have seen, neatly sidesteps this potentially life-ending question as well by referring to the creation.
He goes on in private with his disciples (in the verses which follow and we did not read) with what is probably a direct reference to Antipas and Herodias and says that anyone who divorces his wife to marry another woman commits adultery and any woman who divorces her husband to marry another man also commits adultery. Some argue from this text that what he is prohibiting in private is only divorce with the intention of marriage to another party who had already caught the fancy of one's eye-divorce as a technique for avoiding adultery, an interpretation consistent with Jesus' discussion of committing adultery in the heart. Whether that is true remains a question, but Jesus has done something novel here. He has stepped outside the bounds of Jewish law and recognized a woman's right to take legal action.
It seems to me, however, that it would be unlike Jesus to create new legislation about marriage and about divorce. He does not do that elsewhere; he did not come to abolish the law, he said. What he has done is neatly to sidestep both legal debates by pointing us back to creation to what is God's intention for human beings.
Be that as it may, the church has used Jesus' 'sidestepping' here and similar texts to provide the underpinning for the Christian understanding of marriage: that it is ordained by God in the creation of man and woman and intended by God to be lifelong. In the union of the two in marriage, the Church has seen modeled in our flesh both the mystery of the union of the human and divine in the Incarnate Lord and the mystery of the type of love that Christ our God has for the Church, Christ's nuptial love for the redeemed, an intimate love which is unbreakable and eternal. But the Church has turned this into a sort of law, more restrictive, in fact than the law of the Torah on the subject of marriage. (Seems we have a habit of doing that.)
For the Episcopal Church this remains the essential paradigm for marriage, lifelong union between a man and a woman. I have never officiated at a marriage in which the partners did not intend it to be lifelong. I am required by canon law to make this clear to each couple presenting themselves, and they are required to sign a formal document testifying to that intention. (Didn't I say we'd turned it into a legal process.)
However, this Church has come to recognize that humans often fall short of the ideal, as Jesus said we suffer from "hardness of heart.". Sometimes, a marriage is null because of the conditions under which it was entered: a still-existing prior marriage, or some undisclosed fact, or too close of a blood relationship according to the civil law. At other times, and regrettably, more often, the marriage just ends, it dies, often a long and difficult death. Our approach is to deal pastorally with that reality. First, we try to save the marriage. Those who find their marriage in trouble are to come to the Church to seek counsel before they rush off to a lawyer. And together with the pastor and perhaps others they try to find a way to preserve the marriage before it dies. That preservation will require sacrifice on each party's part.
But if after all attempts have been made and it is apparent that the marriage has ended, then divorce is the remedy provided by the civil authority. The Church recognizes the necessity of that action, for the marriage is no longer the symbol in our flesh of the life and love of Christ bound together with us. It has instead become a whited sepulcher of a dead relationship.
And we hold out the possibility of remarriage for divorced persons. After counseling which includes the acceptance by the divorced person of his or her ongoing responsibility for the welfare of the divorced spouse who is still living, and review by the bishop, the bishop may give permission for the new marriage to proceed.
Rather than taking a narrow literal view of Jesus' words as if they were a new law, our approach is pastoral, accepting the reality of what is akin to a death in the body of Christ. By requiring the bishop's participation, the process leading to a second marriage involves the whole Church. We regret divorce, we morn it. It is a sign of the brokenness of the world in which we live, a brokenness we call sin in which we all participate, but we will not require that people remain trapped in what has become the bonds of death.
We believe we are free no longer to take a narrow, literally legalistic view of Jesus' words for several reasons. First, the social conditions of the world in which Jesus spoke-a world in which divorced women become penniless outcasts with no chance of remarriage--is no longer the case. Women have rights in divorce cases under our civil law that they did not have under Jewish law, although women still often come out as less than equal in divorce settlements. Second, it seems impossible to believe that two people are required to remain together in a relationship that may be abusive both physically and emotionally. Surely, such a deadly relationship would cry out for a relaxation of Jesus' literal words.
But ultimately, Jesus' words point us in this more expansive direction. Jesus points us back to the creation: to the outpouring of God's love to create us and our world from nothingness. And in Creation, "God said: 'It is not good for the human to be alone, I will make him a helper corresponding to him'" (Schocken). God's intention is that humans be in community, in relationships between and among corresponding equals. In Genesis the model is that of the partnership between the sexes, a partnership which over time came to resemble our institution of marriage. But what is important from the beginning of our creation is that we are in relationship, in community with each other-whatever forms that community, those relationships may take-for in our relationships with each other we catch a glimpse into the relationship of love which exists within the heart of the creating God who is the Holy Trinity.
The need for humans to be in community ultimately overrides the narrow legal interpretation put on Jesus' words about marriage and divorce and remarriage. The Church's decision to do this, taken as a pastoral response to the needs of divorced people in our midst, provides a new lens through which to look at Scripture, a lens which places the question in the framework of the creative intent of God's love, rather than in the narrow boundaries of the law. This is a lesson which we can well apply to the current debate in the church over homosexual relationships. The question is: do these relationships, along with other relationships-those between friends, caregivers and their patients and countless others-do these relationships show forth the love that God has for the creation, do they enter into the love at the heart of the Holy Trinity. I believe that they have that capacity and that indeed they do show forth that same love..
Jesus concluded: "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder, let no one separate." Remember that marriage is a temporal sign-limited in time and space-for all marriages end in this world, whether they end naturally with the death of one of the partners or they die unnaturally as the relationship itself withers and dies. Yet, temporal marriage-and all human relationships-point us beyond what they join together in our time. They are a sign of what God has joined together for all eternity: first, the uniting of the human and the divine in Jesus Christ our Lord and, then, us bound together with each other and with Jesus as his Church for ever and ever. It is to that glory which we share with Christ that our human relationships point. And the life we share with Christ Jesus is what no one can put asunder, no one can separate in time, or for ever or unto the ages of ages.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
A Sermon preached by William S. Bennett, n/OHC
© 2003 Holy Cross Monastery
October 5, 2003 (PROPER 22 B) - Pentecost 17,
Scripture Readings for October 5th:
Genesis 2:18-24, Psalm 8, Hebrews 2:1-18, Mark 10:2-12:
Today's Gospel lesson is one that demands close attention. It requires us to look at its context. And I ask you to bear with me as we do that. It, also, requires us to look at its apparent teaching on divorce and the Church's current practice. Finally, it points us to the wide expanse of God's creative love, and away from the narrow strictures of legalism.
"Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?'"
This question which seems to require only a "yes or no" answer was anything but straight-forward. There was a rigorous debate going on among the Pharisees themselves as to the proper answer to this question and the questioners wanted Jesus to side with one party or another. Remnants of the debate can still be read in the Talmud, the collection of commentaries on the law of Israel. There we see that while the husband's right to a divorce had always been admitted and was sanctioned by the Torah, three schools of legal interpretation had emerged by Jesus' time. The governing Torah text was in Deuteronomy 24:1 (using the literal Schocken translation which has not been smoothed over by the translation tradition) - it reads: "When a man takes-in-marriage a woman and espouses her, and it happens: if she does not find favor in his eyes-for he finds in her something of nakedness-he may write for her a Document of Cutoff (Get)."(The Schocken Bible, Vol 1: The Five Books of Moses, New York: Schocken Books, 1995).
Given a text like that it is no wonder that competing schools of interpretation arose.
Rabbi Shammai, who often took the strict, literal view, and his disciples argued that while the man's right to divorce was absolute, it should not be exercised except in the case of nakedness which he interpreted as moral misconduct by the wife. The school following his contemporary and opponent, Rabbi Hillel, the more liberal, that is to say less literal authority, argued that the restricting clause "for he finds in her something of nakedness" was unintelligible and must be ignored. Therefore, divorce was allowable if the husband "did not find favor with the wife", and Hillel deemed her incompetence as a housekeeper to be sufficient grounds. A third camp, later to be headed after Jesus' period by Rabbi Akiba, argued even more liberally that divorce was to be allowed whenever a marriage fails to provide a basis for happiness-for the husband. You might have noticed that on no occasion could the wife divorce her husband for these or any reason.
The attempt by the questioners is to draw Jesus into taking sides in a debate among the rabbis. Given the options, he rejects them all. He says that the provision for divorce was granted because of human hardness of heart, our inability to live into the heart of God's desire. In this response Jesus implicitly rejects the current state of the debate and along with it the husband's absolute moral right for a divorce. Rather he points the questioners back toward creation and God's intention for humanity.
One of the problems with divorce under the law of Israel during Jesus' time was that there was no provision for the divorced wife. She could remarry legally, but it was unlikely that anyone would marry her. Her family were unlikely to take her back in her disgrace and she often ended up homeless, in poverty, reduced in many cases to prostitution. Jesus' limitation on the husband's right to divorce is often seen as a way of protecting women from abandonment by their husbands.
The rabbis were debating only marriage in accordance with the civil law of Israel. There was another type of marriage and divorce in 1st century Palestine: that of the law of the Greek-speaking part of the Roman Empire. Under this law, divorce was more readily obtainable and in many cases prominent women had asserted the right to divorce their husbands on any grounds. And remarriage was easily accomplished.
There had been two rather famous divorces in Palestine and everybody knew about them. Herod Antipas, the ruler of the Galilee and son of King Herod of the nativity stories, had divorced his wife. Simultaneously, Herodias, the wife of his brother Herod Philip, had divorced Philip. And then Antipas and Herodias, brother- and sister-in-law, had married each other-an action totally outside the bounds of what was allowed under Jewish law. The marriage would only have been possible if Philip had died without an heir.
Jesus' cousin, John the Baptizer had spoken out against this scandalous behavior among those who purported to be rulers of Jews. He had said to Antipas: "It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife." And fearful of the Baptizer's public criticism, Herodias and her daughter Salome and Antipas, silenced him by beheading him.
Jesus' questioners, then, are putting him on the spot, not only in the debate among the rabbis, but also in the larger political context. His cousin John is already dead. Answering these questions could well put Jesus in peril...but he answers and his answer, as we have seen, neatly sidesteps this potentially life-ending question as well by referring to the creation.
He goes on in private with his disciples (in the verses which follow and we did not read) with what is probably a direct reference to Antipas and Herodias and says that anyone who divorces his wife to marry another woman commits adultery and any woman who divorces her husband to marry another man also commits adultery. Some argue from this text that what he is prohibiting in private is only divorce with the intention of marriage to another party who had already caught the fancy of one's eye-divorce as a technique for avoiding adultery, an interpretation consistent with Jesus' discussion of committing adultery in the heart. Whether that is true remains a question, but Jesus has done something novel here. He has stepped outside the bounds of Jewish law and recognized a woman's right to take legal action.
It seems to me, however, that it would be unlike Jesus to create new legislation about marriage and about divorce. He does not do that elsewhere; he did not come to abolish the law, he said. What he has done is neatly to sidestep both legal debates by pointing us back to creation to what is God's intention for human beings.
Be that as it may, the church has used Jesus' 'sidestepping' here and similar texts to provide the underpinning for the Christian understanding of marriage: that it is ordained by God in the creation of man and woman and intended by God to be lifelong. In the union of the two in marriage, the Church has seen modeled in our flesh both the mystery of the union of the human and divine in the Incarnate Lord and the mystery of the type of love that Christ our God has for the Church, Christ's nuptial love for the redeemed, an intimate love which is unbreakable and eternal. But the Church has turned this into a sort of law, more restrictive, in fact than the law of the Torah on the subject of marriage. (Seems we have a habit of doing that.)
For the Episcopal Church this remains the essential paradigm for marriage, lifelong union between a man and a woman. I have never officiated at a marriage in which the partners did not intend it to be lifelong. I am required by canon law to make this clear to each couple presenting themselves, and they are required to sign a formal document testifying to that intention. (Didn't I say we'd turned it into a legal process.)
However, this Church has come to recognize that humans often fall short of the ideal, as Jesus said we suffer from "hardness of heart.". Sometimes, a marriage is null because of the conditions under which it was entered: a still-existing prior marriage, or some undisclosed fact, or too close of a blood relationship according to the civil law. At other times, and regrettably, more often, the marriage just ends, it dies, often a long and difficult death. Our approach is to deal pastorally with that reality. First, we try to save the marriage. Those who find their marriage in trouble are to come to the Church to seek counsel before they rush off to a lawyer. And together with the pastor and perhaps others they try to find a way to preserve the marriage before it dies. That preservation will require sacrifice on each party's part.
But if after all attempts have been made and it is apparent that the marriage has ended, then divorce is the remedy provided by the civil authority. The Church recognizes the necessity of that action, for the marriage is no longer the symbol in our flesh of the life and love of Christ bound together with us. It has instead become a whited sepulcher of a dead relationship.
And we hold out the possibility of remarriage for divorced persons. After counseling which includes the acceptance by the divorced person of his or her ongoing responsibility for the welfare of the divorced spouse who is still living, and review by the bishop, the bishop may give permission for the new marriage to proceed.
Rather than taking a narrow literal view of Jesus' words as if they were a new law, our approach is pastoral, accepting the reality of what is akin to a death in the body of Christ. By requiring the bishop's participation, the process leading to a second marriage involves the whole Church. We regret divorce, we morn it. It is a sign of the brokenness of the world in which we live, a brokenness we call sin in which we all participate, but we will not require that people remain trapped in what has become the bonds of death.
We believe we are free no longer to take a narrow, literally legalistic view of Jesus' words for several reasons. First, the social conditions of the world in which Jesus spoke-a world in which divorced women become penniless outcasts with no chance of remarriage--is no longer the case. Women have rights in divorce cases under our civil law that they did not have under Jewish law, although women still often come out as less than equal in divorce settlements. Second, it seems impossible to believe that two people are required to remain together in a relationship that may be abusive both physically and emotionally. Surely, such a deadly relationship would cry out for a relaxation of Jesus' literal words.
But ultimately, Jesus' words point us in this more expansive direction. Jesus points us back to the creation: to the outpouring of God's love to create us and our world from nothingness. And in Creation, "God said: 'It is not good for the human to be alone, I will make him a helper corresponding to him'" (Schocken). God's intention is that humans be in community, in relationships between and among corresponding equals. In Genesis the model is that of the partnership between the sexes, a partnership which over time came to resemble our institution of marriage. But what is important from the beginning of our creation is that we are in relationship, in community with each other-whatever forms that community, those relationships may take-for in our relationships with each other we catch a glimpse into the relationship of love which exists within the heart of the creating God who is the Holy Trinity.
The need for humans to be in community ultimately overrides the narrow legal interpretation put on Jesus' words about marriage and divorce and remarriage. The Church's decision to do this, taken as a pastoral response to the needs of divorced people in our midst, provides a new lens through which to look at Scripture, a lens which places the question in the framework of the creative intent of God's love, rather than in the narrow boundaries of the law. This is a lesson which we can well apply to the current debate in the church over homosexual relationships. The question is: do these relationships, along with other relationships-those between friends, caregivers and their patients and countless others-do these relationships show forth the love that God has for the creation, do they enter into the love at the heart of the Holy Trinity. I believe that they have that capacity and that indeed they do show forth that same love..
Jesus concluded: "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder, let no one separate." Remember that marriage is a temporal sign-limited in time and space-for all marriages end in this world, whether they end naturally with the death of one of the partners or they die unnaturally as the relationship itself withers and dies. Yet, temporal marriage-and all human relationships-point us beyond what they join together in our time. They are a sign of what God has joined together for all eternity: first, the uniting of the human and the divine in Jesus Christ our Lord and, then, us bound together with each other and with Jesus as his Church for ever and ever. It is to that glory which we share with Christ that our human relationships point. And the life we share with Christ Jesus is what no one can put asunder, no one can separate in time, or for ever or unto the ages of ages.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
A Sermon preached by William S. Bennett, n/OHC
© 2003 Holy Cross Monastery
Tuesday, April 8, 2003
BCP - Easter 3 B - 2003
Lectionary Reading
Luke 24:13-35
"This joyful Eastertide, away with sin and sorrow … .” Ah, Eastertide, the Church's joyful season of celebration: time to retell of Jesus' resurrection from the dead; his encounters with Mary Magdalene, Peter, Thomas, the two men on the road to Emmaus; liturgies rich with music, fragrant flowers, festive meals. This is a time to be glad. And with the joyful news comes other news of the continuation of war between Israel and Palestine; war in Afghanistan; civil war in Liberia; smoldering hatred in Northern Ireland; and unrest in all lands. In our families and communities we encounter people who are ill and in need of care and we must cope with our personal needs and concerns. All this can weigh one down. The joy of Eastertide is lovely, but, at times, can seem to be remote and it is hard to be joyous people.
The two men on the road to Emmaus could understand the dilemma of what should be and what they felt. News had reached them that Mary Magdalene had visited Jesus' tomb; had found the tomb empty; and had actually seen and talked with Jesus. Could such be true? They did not have the experience. We too hear the good news but do not have the experience.
In their sadness and preoccupation with their fears and despondency, they still could offer hospitality to one who appeared on the road with them. “Come, walk with us. Don't be alone.” Perhaps Jesus' presence was a comfortable one - a person with whom one did not hesitate to talk. Then again the two men might have been too sad and weary to mind what they said. When Jesus asks them to tell Him of their conversation, they opened their hearts to Him. They confided their hopes that Jesus might be the Messiah because of His teaching and ministry; they spoke of the collaboration of their religious leaders with the Roman government that resulted in Jesus' being crucified. They told of the experience of Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome. We too hear the Easter Gospel; we know the story and those who play their parts in the story.
When they had finished, Jesus said to them, “How dull you are. How slow to believe all that the prophet said!” How dull some of us are! We cannot allow the Good News to penetrate into our daily lives. Still the two men did not perceive their companion's identity even after His explaining the Scriptures to them. They were trying to understand the resurrection. Despite their lack of discernment they did not want Jesus to leave them. They invited Him to stay with them, to share a meal, to rest. Jesus accepted their invitation.
The story now has a significant turn. The guest becomes the host. At supper Jesus breaks and blesses the bread and then gives the bread to His two companions. Then they know that their travel companion is the Lord. Jesus assures them that He is alive and then disappears from them. The men are not devastated. Their hearts are “on fire” with joy and love and they run to Jerusalem to share their experience of the Risen Christ.
You and I may walk with Jesus. Sometimes in our walk we fail to discern His Presence because we are weighed down with sorrow and cares. We speak of these things and we nurture a hope that the life of Jesus will penetrate into our dull spirits. We may not be able to fully comprehend either our need or our words, but we can ask our Lord to stay with us. When we invite Jesus into our lives (through prayer, worship, meditation, study, acts of mercy) He accepts and He becomes the Host who bids us to share His life. When we accept His life we too know Him in “the breaking of the bread.” Then our hearts will also burn with joy and we shall eagerly share the Good News that He is alive and in our midst. “Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest - rather let us be your guest for you are the Host.”
David Bryan Hoopes, OHC
Superior, Order of the Holy Cross
Luke 24:13-35
"This joyful Eastertide, away with sin and sorrow … .” Ah, Eastertide, the Church's joyful season of celebration: time to retell of Jesus' resurrection from the dead; his encounters with Mary Magdalene, Peter, Thomas, the two men on the road to Emmaus; liturgies rich with music, fragrant flowers, festive meals. This is a time to be glad. And with the joyful news comes other news of the continuation of war between Israel and Palestine; war in Afghanistan; civil war in Liberia; smoldering hatred in Northern Ireland; and unrest in all lands. In our families and communities we encounter people who are ill and in need of care and we must cope with our personal needs and concerns. All this can weigh one down. The joy of Eastertide is lovely, but, at times, can seem to be remote and it is hard to be joyous people.
The two men on the road to Emmaus could understand the dilemma of what should be and what they felt. News had reached them that Mary Magdalene had visited Jesus' tomb; had found the tomb empty; and had actually seen and talked with Jesus. Could such be true? They did not have the experience. We too hear the good news but do not have the experience.
In their sadness and preoccupation with their fears and despondency, they still could offer hospitality to one who appeared on the road with them. “Come, walk with us. Don't be alone.” Perhaps Jesus' presence was a comfortable one - a person with whom one did not hesitate to talk. Then again the two men might have been too sad and weary to mind what they said. When Jesus asks them to tell Him of their conversation, they opened their hearts to Him. They confided their hopes that Jesus might be the Messiah because of His teaching and ministry; they spoke of the collaboration of their religious leaders with the Roman government that resulted in Jesus' being crucified. They told of the experience of Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome. We too hear the Easter Gospel; we know the story and those who play their parts in the story.
When they had finished, Jesus said to them, “How dull you are. How slow to believe all that the prophet said!” How dull some of us are! We cannot allow the Good News to penetrate into our daily lives. Still the two men did not perceive their companion's identity even after His explaining the Scriptures to them. They were trying to understand the resurrection. Despite their lack of discernment they did not want Jesus to leave them. They invited Him to stay with them, to share a meal, to rest. Jesus accepted their invitation.
The story now has a significant turn. The guest becomes the host. At supper Jesus breaks and blesses the bread and then gives the bread to His two companions. Then they know that their travel companion is the Lord. Jesus assures them that He is alive and then disappears from them. The men are not devastated. Their hearts are “on fire” with joy and love and they run to Jerusalem to share their experience of the Risen Christ.
You and I may walk with Jesus. Sometimes in our walk we fail to discern His Presence because we are weighed down with sorrow and cares. We speak of these things and we nurture a hope that the life of Jesus will penetrate into our dull spirits. We may not be able to fully comprehend either our need or our words, but we can ask our Lord to stay with us. When we invite Jesus into our lives (through prayer, worship, meditation, study, acts of mercy) He accepts and He becomes the Host who bids us to share His life. When we accept His life we too know Him in “the breaking of the bread.” Then our hearts will also burn with joy and we shall eagerly share the Good News that He is alive and in our midst. “Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest - rather let us be your guest for you are the Host.”
David Bryan Hoopes, OHC
Superior, Order of the Holy Cross
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