Saturday, March 21, 2009

RCL - Lent 4 B - 22 Mar 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
RCL – Lent 4 B – Sunday 22 March 2009


Numbers 21:4-9
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21

Crux Mundi Medicina Est.” Maybe you have noticed that Latin inscription over the lintel of the monastery’s front porch. Not unlike our crucified Lord, that hunk of green marble had to be lifted up, hoisted up there, for all to see. “The Cross is the medicine of the world” it announces. How can that be?
Well, there is a bit of metaphor and symbolism at work here. You could say “The medicine of the world is God’s grace of faith and love.” Let’s look into that, shall we?


Guest House entrance - Originally uploaded by Randy OHC

In the last 2 weeks, this community has witnessed beautiful signs of deepening faith and widening love. Two weeks ago, our ex-postulant Charles became Br. Charles as he was clothed in the monastic habit and became our latest novice.

Last monday, Mark arrived for his two-week aspirant visit with our community.

And then, this past Thursday, Br. James made his initial profession of the Benedictine vow to God in front of a great many people. Signs of faith and love abound all the time, of course, but I sometimes need a few big ones to refresh my ability to notice them.

All three of these men are responding to God’s gift of faith and love. And all three, as I know them, cannot help but witness to God’s love in good works small and great. Thanks be to God for each one of them.

*****

In accepting to go to the cross, God, in the person of Jesus, demonstrated that it is in love that we are called in a new covenant with the divine.

Despite what many prophets of doom would like us to believe, we are not called to God’s judgment in order to decide if we are worthy of the new covenant. If God’s new covenant had been all about judgment, Jesus wouldn’t have taken on human flesh to end up on a cross, die and be raised from the dead.

*****

God loves us first and foremost, regardless of our merits. God reaches out to give us abundant and eternal life through faith in Jesus. And God does that as a gift, as a free gift, as grace. Now, a gift more completely becomes a gift when it is accepted, opened and enjoyed. We can embrace God’s grace or we can leave it. Come to think of it, this is much like a medicine. It is most effective in curing your ailment if you take it, and if you take it as prescribed.

In being lifted up on the cross, Jesus showed us how his love of God and his love of God’s people surpassed any law and resulting judgment. If judgment there is, we are our own prosecutor. Divine love is freely offered through faith in Jesus. When God turns to me and offers his love, if my hands are too occupied - obstinately grabbing much less valuable things – then I cannot receive the grace of faith and requite the love God offers.

If I choose to not accept the gift, I have condemned myself; and the condemnation is that I am not availing myself of a love that is always there, ready to answer. God looks at us in love first. We get to choose to look away, or to embrace that love. We get to move into the light, to be revealed and converted. Or we get to stay in darkness, hoping that our shortcomings are going unnoticed, and will continue to accrue us the vanities we so cherish.

But darkness is not dark to God’s gaze. God continues to look at us in love, no matter what. As soon as I’m turning my gaze towards him; as soon as I let go of the trivial things I thought so valuable to hang on to; as soon as I choose of my own will to do move into the light, God’s gift of faith and my receiving of his love are possible. I no longer stand self-condemned but loved into abundant and eternal life.

*****

The cross is a powerful symbol of God’s love for the world; a love that does not come as a result of a judgment, but rather as total self-giving, before any judgment occurs, and as an instrument of our self-conviction. We can embrace the cross and be convicted of love or we can shirk the cross and convict ourselves to remaining in darkness.

*****

So what do you think? Do we need to first prove in our actions that we are building God’s commonwealth of love, his republic of universal welfare? Is that what gets God’s attention? Is that how we woo him to love us?

Or do we fall in love with the source of all love, and then, become irrepressibly driven to bring God’s love to the world in any way we are gifted to?

*****

The followers of Paul summed it up best in their pastoral letter to the people of God at Ephesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

So faith is received. God’s love is then requited. Faith opens us up to the love for God, not our efforts at pleasing God. But through faith and love, our way of life becomes to do God’s works as he desires us to do.

We pray “Your will be done, on earth as in heaven” or “may my will become subsumed in yours.” No faith vs. works argument here; faith first, love a close second and good works as an outcome of both.

*****

So God’s grace of faith and love is the medicine of the world. And the cross can be a symbol of that love; universal, unconditional, unmediated; a love that perfects us in loving in the same way; universally, unconditionally. In a phrase, love divine.

Eventually, Holy Cross aspirants, postulants, novices and initially professed may be called, like their elders, to don the life profession cross of our Order on their monastic habit. But already, they choose to don that cross in their hearts.

May God send us many more courageous and loving men like them.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Thanks be to God.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

RCL - Lent 2 B - 08 Mar 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
RCL – Lent 2 B – Sunday 08 Mar 2009



We continue our Lenten pilgrimage, our journey toward the Cross and toward Easter and new life. One popular TV pastor has given Lent an acronym: LENT - “Let’s Eliminate Negative Thinking”. Maybe he’s right…
Lent is a time to look into our hearts and ask the hard questions - about ourselves, our relationships, our communities. Questions like:
Who is this Messiah we say we follow?
Who are we?
The purpose in the asking is not to arrive at definitive conclusions, but to keep us alive, to keep us open and searching and ready for more of the truth to reveal itself to us and then to live more of it. In keeping the questions alive, we keep ourselves alive. Our tendency is to settle and conclude and arrive - which is a kind of numb spiritual sleep, but the Gospel keeps unsettling us, keeps raising reality, keeps pushing us forward toward our true home. The greatest danger in our spiritual lives is the firm conviction that we’re doing it right, that we’ve got it together more than other poor souls who are not as enlightened and sophisticated as we are. Each story or encounter in the life of Jesus comes along and knocks us off our horse. He’s unpredictable and hard to classify and dangerous. As soon as a person or group came at him with the idea of labeling and defining him, he slipped out of their grasp. Jesus keeps knocking down the walls of definition we build around him. One of the dynamics of American Christianity is the branding of Jesus to fit our agendas. Let’s get the ultimate advocate for our issue! Let’s get the Messiah to back our program! If we are conservative, then that's who Jesus becomes for us. If we are progressive, then that's the part of Jesus that we focus on. The joke is on us - he is both - and neither. He wouldn't and won't be owned by our agenda. The kingdom of God is his agenda. Do we form the Jesus we want or are we formed by the Jesus who is revealed to us?
Who is this Messiah we say we follow?
Who are we?
This Messiah of ours loves us too much to let us stay stuck in our safe boxes.
The Gospel this morning seeks to orient us toward this new way of being. Peter, whose mouth is usually ahead of his brain, has decided how the Messiah is to be and act - he is a self-appointed adviser to Jesus’ campaign for Messiah. He sees suffering on the horizon and says “Let’s run for it. Let’s protect ourselves at all cost.” Jesus responds to Peter’s attempt to manipulate him with love. And this love is not always or even usually a warm and fuzzy feel-good kind of pleasure that the culture defines as love. This is love that will not let me go, love that sees through my games and my masks, is compelled to resist what is evil in me so that God's goodness can be formed in me. Peter experiences this kind of love - but it doesn't feel good for the Satan in him, in us, to be exposed and named. There is no other way to form the good of cross-bearing in him, prepare him to surrender his agenda, his plan, his grand schemes for Messiah. Later he weeps at his own denial because he has known this love, he runs to the empty tomb because he has been loved like this, he preaches at Pentecost in the power of this love, he leads the early Church and then dies on an upside-down cross because he ultimately learned that nothing is greater, nothing more real and sure and worth dying for than this love.
It is no easy or light thing to welcome this kind of love into our hearts. Do we believe that God is this good, this gracious?

I’m not usually the type to click on every sensational live video that makes its way onto the Internet, but this one tempted me. A car chase in California, live on CNN via the news helicopter. I clicked. The fleeing vehicle was a U-Haul driven by a woman - there’s a story here, I thought, so I kept watching. Over the winding highways of greater Los Angeles she drove, very fast, and the police followed. I began watching before Vespers and checked afterward - still fleeing and following. After supper - still fleeing and following. At some point during Compline, (I found the video the next day) she ran out of gas, ran from the truck, was quickly tackled by the highway patrol, and arrested. Multiple felony charges, including stealing the truck, and probably several years in jail are her future.
The scene became a parable for me - the poor woman fleeing the inevitable, clinging to some irrational thought of escape, holding onto the illusion that movement is freedom for as long as possible. And the police patiently watching and following at her heels, God like.
How like this woman I am! I don’t want to stop, let go, surrender, face myself, let myself be loved this much. I’d much rather do it my way, follow my plan, in a way that makes me look good and get the credit! Our running gives the illusion of freedom but our fear and drive to run have already imprisoned us. In the upside down world of the Kingdom we win by surrender, by losing. We live by dying. We conquer by laying down the swords with which we slice each other and find in our empty hands what we truly need and deep down really want - for the power of love to be made real through us.
Who is this Messiah we say we follow?
Who are we?
This Messiah of ours loves us too much to let us stay on the run.
God pursues us relentlessly and waits for us to say “yes” to real life. God is, to use the title of Francis Thompson’s famous poem “The Hound of Heaven”. The poem opens with these haunting words:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat--and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet--
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

Who is this Messiah we say we follow?
Who are we?
Lent points us back to the Good News and the Good News is that the same Savior who unnerves us isn’t finished with us. God is chasing us down and will unload our trucks full of empty external ritual and tired pious tradition that only deepen our loneliness and isolation - will dump it all out and find the real us. The invitation of Lent from this Messiah we say we follow to you and me is to be honest, cross-bearingly honest: to look at everything through the Gospel, to stop running, to hear the invitation of Jesus to you anew, to live a full, rich life through Christ - to be loved and to love your neighbor. The proof of having our illusions stripped away from us is a mercy and an empathy with our own cross and the pain of those around us - self-giving, sacrifice, to die if necessary, for the life of our neighbor. As we journey toward the Passion and Easter, may it be our wholehearted commitment to accept the love and the cross Christ offers us.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

RCL - Lent 1 B - 01 Mar 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Borden, OHC
RCL – Lent 1 B – Sunday 01 Mar 2009

Well here we find ourselves in lent. And what are we going to do about it? If we were musicians reading a music score the word Lent or Lento would have a very specific meaning. Its an indication of tempo - of speed. Specifically it means a slow speed... a very slow speed, just one notch up from dead stop. The tempo of lento can very easily put us to sleep. Another place we regularly encounter a tempo that might fairly be called Lento is driving in heavy traffic. Things start to slow down and then you’re creeping along at 5 to 10 miles an hour... and thinking things like “at this rate I’ll get home next year...” To be honest, when I’m stuck in traffic going Lento, my thoughts often turn downright nasty. Its easy to nurture rage at 5 miles an hour. Lento, Lent - its either too slow to hold our attention or too slow to endure... yet here we are in Lent. The reading from Mark’s Gospel has its own interesting tempo - Lento is a marking that Mark would not be familiar with. He whisks us along at a speed that might more accurately be called Presto. Jesus is baptized, a voice from heaven says “You are my son” and immediately Jesus it driven to the wilderness by a spirit. Presumably that drive did not involve the frustrations of heavy, slow, lento traffic... Forty days Jesus is in the wilderness facing hardship and temptation - one after the other. And then at break-neck speed Mark brings us back to Galilee - John the Baptist has been arrested and Jesus is proclaiming the Gospel. The season may be Lento, but Mark is a little out of season... So lets savor the wilderness a bit - we know more about it than Mark is telling us. Jesus is tempted with a challenge to his identity - if you are really the son of God prove it - turn these stones to bread. Jesus it tempted with death-defying thrills - jump from the top of the Temple in Jerusalem and let the Angels protect you. Jesus it tempted with power - I will give you all the kingdoms of earth - all you have to do is worship me... As we dial our tempo back to the snails pace of Lento, looking at these three archetypes of temptation in slow motion can be very rewarding. First look at the sequence. Jesus is baptized and then the temptation begins. It would be ever so nice that when we are baptized into the body of Christ our temptation would end... That would make it so very easy to be a follower of Jesus. But Mark is letting us know that the hard work only begins with baptism. To follow Jesus is to face temptation. John Wesley pointed out that as people grow in faith they must necessarily face more temptation. You can not make choices for good without know the alternative choices. The more you choose to walk in the light, the more you have be aware that you could also walk in darkness. It goes with the territory. So temptation is just going to be an ordinary and ongoing part of our walk with Jesus. The nature of the temptations Jesus faces are worth examining. So you’re God... change these stones to bread. Surely there could be no harm in Jesus showing off by changing stones into bread. How is that different than changing water into wine? Or making the blind see? But there is a fundamental difference. Jesus throughout the Gospels uses Godly power to accomplish good. The temptation here is to use Godly power just for the sake of power... just to prove a point - there is no greater good. The sick are not made whole, the hungry are not fed, the downtrodden are not lifted up. Jesus is tempted to use Godly power just because he can. That is a temptation we all must wrestle with. Sometimes it is very tempting to exercise power just because we can... just because it feels good. But power for the sake of power is never satisfied. It always craves more power and it will never tolerate opposition. It is the road that leads to tyranny. Worship me and I will give you control over the entire earth... That is a power most of us really don’t aspire to and really couldn’t handle. But Jesus surely could have handled it. With power over everyone couldn’t Jesus have made us all act really good? Wouldn’t this be the fastest way to build God’s kingdom - avoiding all the messy stuff and just cutting to the chase? Couldn’t Jesus have used this power to end wars? To make health care universal? To stop governmental corruption? To make poverty history? ... couldn’t thousands of years of misery have been avoided? It’s a temptingly easy short cut. Except we would no longer be human with human free will. We would no longer be choosing to follow God - we would simply be doing what we were commanded to do. We would have a facsimile of paradise, except we would all be slaves. But that other temptation - throw yourself from the highest point of the temple and let the angels rescue you. That is, I think, the temptation that is most with us. Its only a little distance away from give us this day our daily bread... Having faith that God provides sets us free to take risks that faithless people could not take. Faith in God allowed Martin Luther King to walk faithfully among angry, hate-filled crowds. God is not calling us to risk-free, safe living. This temptation is not about taking risks. It has more to do with carelessness... Go about our lives with not too much worry and trust in angels to keep us from splattering on the ground. As a nation, for example, we have an energy policy that basically assumes some type of Godly rescue - before we run out of oil, hydrogen fuel cells will be perfected... or bio-fuels from seaweed or some other god from the machine scenario. We take clean fresh water for granted even as large parts of the earth, even large parts of the United States, face increasingly severe shortages of safe drinking water. Vast parts of our mid-west are subsiding as we deplete underground aquifers for the sake of irrigation. Our strategy seems to be that God will provide a miracle before we run out of water. We are throwing ourselves from a high tower and trusting angels to catch us in the nick of time. It is a careless and selfish way of living that is extremely tempting because it requires so little thought. A comfortable life free of temptation - that is not what the good news of the Gospels is about. A life where God does the hard work and we stand by and watch - that’s not in the Gospels either. A life where we get to share the pain of the injured, the sorrow of the grieving, the shame of the outcast - that is in the Gospels. We also get to share the joy of the joyful and ecstacy of those who know God - it is a profoundly beautiful way to live. Most of all it is a conscious way to live. God calls us to be conscious of God in us, in our neighbors, in strangers, in all of creation; Conscious of the demons that walk beside us - or that perhaps we carry on our own backs. There is a play by Charles Tanner - founder of the Covenant Players. It is perhaps the worlds shortest play. It features a couple walking into a museum. As they start their tour, one says to the other “Don’t stop to look at anything, or we won’t have time to see everything.” That’s the entire play. The tempo of our post-modern world mesmerizes and anesthetizes us. Lent calls us to a tempo that lets us be conscious of God and of God’s creation.