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
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