Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
BCP - Easter B - Sunday 12 April 2009
Alleluia - the Lord is Risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
Here we find ourselves on a joyful Easter morning celebrating the risen savior. Our observance at Holy Cross Monastery is not just joyful - it’s a bit of an endurance test... We’ve kindled new fire, rehearsed the whole of salvation history (at least up until now), renewed our baptismal covenant, had the liturgy of the word, and soon the liturgy of the table - and only then do we even come to breakfast...
What a day. I haven’t even had my first cup of coffee...
This story of death giving way to life, of despair giving way to joy, of failure giving way to triumph is a story packed with meaning. There is layer after layer, texture after texture. The intervening centuries have barely given theologians time to scratch the surface. And I propose to only scratch a little more now and I don’t pretend in any way to have anything like a comprehensive idea of the meaning of the Easter story.
Its easy, amidst all the joy, to loose sight of the difficult meanings of Easter. Jesus is risen - what more do we need to know?
But the reality is that Jesus didn’t just die - Jesus was executed, murdered if you will. And since that day a lot more blood has been spilled because we have decided that someone else is responsible for Jesus death - and we know who that someone is.
Our liturgy deals with this in a very powerful way. It puts us in the midst of the crowd shouting crucify. The crowd is not them, the government, or the religious leaders, or a backroom conspiracy, but us. We are the anonymous crowd shouting crucify. Blood is on our hands - the blood of Jesus.
Sometimes I fantasize that if I had lived back then, I would have been a hero. It’s an enjoyable thought - a handy distraction - but to be honest, its probably a lie.
The crowd wasn’t made up of nasty, evil people. It was made up of ordinary people, people like you and me.
But my place isn’t limited just to the crowd. The disciples failed Jesus in various ways. And to be honest, disciples now (that’s us) are not much different than disciples then. Daily I join Peter in denying Jesus. Daily I join Judas in betraying Jesus. Daily I join the rest of the disciples in falling asleep; not in huge and dramatic failures, but in little, unremarkable failures.
For me, part of the vital Easter message is to remind me to be humble. In our triumphant Easter celebration, its easy to sacrifice humility. Jesus is victorias... not me.
Our church year has a fascinating way of compressing things. A little more than three months ago we celebrated Jesus’ birth and here we are, having remembered his execution, celebrating his resurrection. There were more than 30 years between these events in real time, but not in the way we remember them.
This compression creates an urgency in the flow of events. Its as though God becomes incarnate, Emmanuel, and just three months later we can’t stand any more of it. We execute Emmanuel. Having God with us is just too much to bear.
This is my story. God comes into my world and I rejoice. But at the same time I rebel. I do everything I can to get God back out of my world, because having God in my world is not easy. It makes demands of me, changes me. I want it both ways: God with me and... I get to I get to stay “me”, I don’t have to change.
I’ve got lots of company on this particular journey. We all want God in our lives and at the same time we all want God out of our lives. It happened then. It happens now. It will happen in the future.
God comes into our lives. We push God out as best we can. And the good news of Easter is we are fail. Our best is not nearly good enough.
Jesus rises. Jesus lives. Jesus loves us. Jesus is triumphant. We are failures. Alleluia.
We are not heroes in this story. Just as the disciples were not heroes. God does not call us to be heroes. God calls us to be followers. We do that as best we can. Sometimes our best is heroic. Sometimes our best is failure. Its doesn’t really matter.
Jesus calls us as we are, not as we think Jesus wants us to be, or as we think we ought to be. My personal failures are part of Jesus’ victory and so they have a place in the Easter story too.
The story of Easter calls us to recognize our own failure and surrender to God. In this surrender lies our greatest joy and freedom.
I don’t admit failure easily, and that is part of my struggle with Easter. I have a strong desire to find ways to be a winner in this story, and the only way to win is to loose. That paradox sits squarely at the center of our baptized lives. To live we must give up our lives.
God comes into our lives and for good and practical reasons we want God out of our lives.
Incarnate God makes demands: Feed my sheep. Comfort the sorrowful. Tend the sick. Honor to those whom society rejects. Aid those in need. Look out for those who can’t look out for themselves. That all sounds fine until the food that goes to the hungry is coming off of my plate.
Welcoming gentle Jesus meek and mild into my life would be an entirely joyful and happy thing, but that is not the deal. Jesus, Emmanuel, is not meek and mild. And its not that I welcome Jesus into my life, its that I give my life to Jesus - to God. It is joyful and sorrowful, happy and heartbreaking, all at the same time.
Jesus isn’t going to come into my world as a welcome and well-behaved guest - Jesus will take my world. And worse than that, Jesus will fill it with people I would just as soon avoid, with people who disturb me, with people who frighten me. It’s a terrifying thing.
What do we do when we get scared? We fight. I’m going to fight to protect my home, my stuff, my self as best I can. I’ll shut the doors and lock the locks. I’ll put bars on the windows. I’ll patrol my boundaries and erect strong fences.
I’ll have my regular Good Fridays where I think I’ve finally gotten the last nail securely pounded in and thus have protected my status quo.
And just as regularly Jesus will return to life... to my life.
I will fail and Jesus will triumph. Alleluia.
Those who would follow Jesus must leave self behind. To save our lives we must loose our lives.
This is resurrection. As we die to who we have been, we rise again to who God calls us to be.
So let us joyfully celebrate our own failure and God’s victory. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. Alleluia.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
RCL - Good Friday B - 10 Apr 2009
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. James Michael Dowd, OHC
RCL - Good Friday B - Friday 10 April 2009
An Invitation To Love
There are many aspects to Good Friday. Way to many for one sermon. In fact, over the course of Christian history so much has been written about the meaning of Good Friday in general, and the Cross of Christ specifically, that it can be numbing. Beginning with the writers of Scripture, the great Fathers of the Church, theologians throughout time, saints, scholars, mystics, poets, and ordinary folks like me, all of us have tried to make sense of the Passion, Crucifixion and Death of Our Lord on Calvary. And none of it has ever been satisfying to me, at least not totally.
But I have come to a point in my life where I am willing to accept mystery. Especially the mystery of the Passion. In my earlier life, I had to know all the facts we could know about the Crucifixion of Christ.
It seemed to me that being in touch with the historic Jesus of Nazareth was essential to my faith. And now, not so much. In fact, the Lord’s Passion has drawn me into an experience of God that is so much deeper than I could have ever gotten had I just stuck with an historical approach to the faith.
And if there is any one group of people who have led me to this point, it is the great Mystics who are responsible. One of them, St. Catherine of Siena, wrote this prayer:
The common denominator in this mystical approach to the Passion of Our Lord seems to be a contemplation of the crucifix, and of the Holy Wounds and Precious Blood of Christ. I could not possibly count how many paintings of saints I looked at over the years who were staring at a
crucifix on the wall, or on their desk, or held in their arms like a baby. But that image is still very important to me and is still one I use in my own prayer.
The last stanza of the prayer I just read from St. Catherine is the one that moves me: “Precious Blood, Delight of Holy Souls, Draw us!” It’s that phrase “draw us” that appeals to me. That is, after all, what Jesus told us the cross would do. Just two weeks ago, on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, we heard the Gospel proclaimed “...when I am lifted from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” I believe, that if there was a one sentence summation of the term Salvation History, that would be it: “when I am lifted from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”
Christ is drawing all people to himself by his cross and, no matter how hard we try to clean up the cross and make it less messy, we cannot get away from one thing: Christ wants to draw us in with it. That is why, I think, all those Saints and Mystics spent so much time gazing on a crucifix, looking at Jesus’ Holy Wounds and contemplating his Precious Blood. That approach has been written off to cultural forces and over zealous piety, and it’s not really popular today. But I have come to believe that there is something to it.
But why exactly is Christ drawing us into his suffering? My answer to that question is that I believe that Christ was constantly teaching us how to love in everything he did. I think with his teaching, with his healing, with his raising people from the dead, all of that was about teaching us how to love one another, thus teaching us how to live in closer union with God. Remember that he told his disciples that they, too, had the power to convey God’s love, to forgive people’s sins, to heal the sick, drive out demons, and even raise the dead. All we needed was faith. All we needed was love.
And throughout, Jesus repeatedly says that he would not lose even one of us. Listen again to the Gospel Proclamation we just heard:
Clearly, Jesus knows that he must go to the very limit to demonstrate for us what it means to love. And there he is imparting wisdom, healing the sick, raising the dead, which is returned with either a great deal of hatred and fear, or, perhaps worse, indifference. And so, it’s off to Calvary.
Thomas a Kempis, not a mystic, by the way, in his classic work The Imitation of Christ tells us that “if Jesus Crucified would come into our hearts, how quickly and perfectly we would be instructed in the spiritual life.” And, with all due respect to Thomas a Kempis, I think he only got that partially right. I think Jesus Crucified coming into our hearts is a good thing - but that’s for another sermon. Right now, what I am asking you to do is to reflect on the Cross of Christ as an
Invitation. An Invitation to love that Christ is drawing you - and all of us - into. I believe that this is not so much about us being open to receiving Christ in our hearts - some how that seems to self-referential on Good Friday. I believe the Cross of Christ is about us - each of us - being drawn into Christ on the Cross to become a union of love in him.
If we were in a union of love in him we would know what it means to hang on that Cross as the ultimate expression of love. We would know that we could not lose even one who has been entrusted to us. We would find a way to love the person in our life who is odd, difficult, temperamental.
We would find a way to love those who have been pushed to the fringes of society: the hungry and homeless who prowl our city streets in greater numbers with each passing day; the sick and dying, who so often are ignored because it is just to painful to see them up close; our elderly, who too easily get warehoused in soul-less institutions; those we wage war on in with increasing stealth, so that we don’t even have to look into their eyes as we murder them. And we would love these people not in some kind of ethereal way, praying for them from a great distance, but
in a real, messy, sweaty, bloody, way - just like the way Jesus loved us on the Cross. We would be involved with them. We would love them until our hearts broke. We would even die for them.
St. Paul, perhaps the original mystic, tells us that “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. That is what being drawn to Christ’s Cross does. That’s the invitation. I have come to believe that God became Incarnate as Jesus the Christ who then suffered and died, not in order to live in our hearts, but so that we might live in his heart, become part of his body, be in total union with him. If we were in this total union with him, we would indeed be capable of forgiving the sins of another, of healing the sick, even of raising the dead. And, as we are all part of this same Body of Christ, we dare not lose even one part of that Body.
That’s why, I think, all those saints and mystics were gazing on the cross. And that’s why I think we should all follow their example. We should gaze on that Cross of Christ, not as we might look at a horror movie recoiling from all the gore. Rather, we should gaze upon that Cross and be drawn into it as something much more difficult than gore.
We should look upon our Lord and know that we have been Invited to Love in Him, through Him, and with Him. Right up there on that Cross.
AMEN.
Br. James Michael Dowd, OHC
RCL - Good Friday B - Friday 10 April 2009
An Invitation To Love
There are many aspects to Good Friday. Way to many for one sermon. In fact, over the course of Christian history so much has been written about the meaning of Good Friday in general, and the Cross of Christ specifically, that it can be numbing. Beginning with the writers of Scripture, the great Fathers of the Church, theologians throughout time, saints, scholars, mystics, poets, and ordinary folks like me, all of us have tried to make sense of the Passion, Crucifixion and Death of Our Lord on Calvary. And none of it has ever been satisfying to me, at least not totally.
But I have come to a point in my life where I am willing to accept mystery. Especially the mystery of the Passion. In my earlier life, I had to know all the facts we could know about the Crucifixion of Christ.
It seemed to me that being in touch with the historic Jesus of Nazareth was essential to my faith. And now, not so much. In fact, the Lord’s Passion has drawn me into an experience of God that is so much deeper than I could have ever gotten had I just stuck with an historical approach to the faith.
And if there is any one group of people who have led me to this point, it is the great Mystics who are responsible. One of them, St. Catherine of Siena, wrote this prayer:
Precious Blood,Catherine, of course, is the great 14th Century Doctor of the Church and Mystic. At the same time my intellect was telling me to study about the historic Jesus, my heart and soul was drawing me to the Western Mystics and especially to their contemplation of the Passion of Our Lord. This attraction began for me when I was quite young - long before I even knew what a Mystic was. I just knew there was something about the kind of prayer that they engaged in to be right. While I sometimes find the language they have used a bit flowery and, sure, they sometimes seemed a little obsessed with just exactly how much suffering a nail to the ankle produced; on the whole, I thought - and think - they basically got it right.
Ocean of Divine Mercy
Flow upon us!
Precious Blood,
Most Pure Offering
Procure us every grace!
Precious Blood,
Hope and refuge for sinners
Atone for us!
Precious Blood,
Delight of Holy Souls
Draw us!
The common denominator in this mystical approach to the Passion of Our Lord seems to be a contemplation of the crucifix, and of the Holy Wounds and Precious Blood of Christ. I could not possibly count how many paintings of saints I looked at over the years who were staring at a
crucifix on the wall, or on their desk, or held in their arms like a baby. But that image is still very important to me and is still one I use in my own prayer.
The last stanza of the prayer I just read from St. Catherine is the one that moves me: “Precious Blood, Delight of Holy Souls, Draw us!” It’s that phrase “draw us” that appeals to me. That is, after all, what Jesus told us the cross would do. Just two weeks ago, on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, we heard the Gospel proclaimed “...when I am lifted from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” I believe, that if there was a one sentence summation of the term Salvation History, that would be it: “when I am lifted from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”
Christ is drawing all people to himself by his cross and, no matter how hard we try to clean up the cross and make it less messy, we cannot get away from one thing: Christ wants to draw us in with it. That is why, I think, all those Saints and Mystics spent so much time gazing on a crucifix, looking at Jesus’ Holy Wounds and contemplating his Precious Blood. That approach has been written off to cultural forces and over zealous piety, and it’s not really popular today. But I have come to believe that there is something to it.
But why exactly is Christ drawing us into his suffering? My answer to that question is that I believe that Christ was constantly teaching us how to love in everything he did. I think with his teaching, with his healing, with his raising people from the dead, all of that was about teaching us how to love one another, thus teaching us how to live in closer union with God. Remember that he told his disciples that they, too, had the power to convey God’s love, to forgive people’s sins, to heal the sick, drive out demons, and even raise the dead. All we needed was faith. All we needed was love.
And throughout, Jesus repeatedly says that he would not lose even one of us. Listen again to the Gospel Proclamation we just heard:
Jesus: “Whom are you looking for?”In St. John’s Gospel we hear Jesus say something to that effect four different times. That he will not lose even one. And in the Good Shepherd narrative, Jesus tells us that a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep, as opposed to the hired hand who flees the moment the wolf arrives on the scene.
Reader 1: “Jesus of Nazareth.”
Jesus: “I told you that I am he. So if you are looking for me, let these
men go.”
Narrator: This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken, “I did not
lose a single one of those whom you gave me.”
Clearly, Jesus knows that he must go to the very limit to demonstrate for us what it means to love. And there he is imparting wisdom, healing the sick, raising the dead, which is returned with either a great deal of hatred and fear, or, perhaps worse, indifference. And so, it’s off to Calvary.
Thomas a Kempis, not a mystic, by the way, in his classic work The Imitation of Christ tells us that “if Jesus Crucified would come into our hearts, how quickly and perfectly we would be instructed in the spiritual life.” And, with all due respect to Thomas a Kempis, I think he only got that partially right. I think Jesus Crucified coming into our hearts is a good thing - but that’s for another sermon. Right now, what I am asking you to do is to reflect on the Cross of Christ as an
Invitation. An Invitation to love that Christ is drawing you - and all of us - into. I believe that this is not so much about us being open to receiving Christ in our hearts - some how that seems to self-referential on Good Friday. I believe the Cross of Christ is about us - each of us - being drawn into Christ on the Cross to become a union of love in him.
If we were in a union of love in him we would know what it means to hang on that Cross as the ultimate expression of love. We would know that we could not lose even one who has been entrusted to us. We would find a way to love the person in our life who is odd, difficult, temperamental.
We would find a way to love those who have been pushed to the fringes of society: the hungry and homeless who prowl our city streets in greater numbers with each passing day; the sick and dying, who so often are ignored because it is just to painful to see them up close; our elderly, who too easily get warehoused in soul-less institutions; those we wage war on in with increasing stealth, so that we don’t even have to look into their eyes as we murder them. And we would love these people not in some kind of ethereal way, praying for them from a great distance, but
in a real, messy, sweaty, bloody, way - just like the way Jesus loved us on the Cross. We would be involved with them. We would love them until our hearts broke. We would even die for them.
St. Paul, perhaps the original mystic, tells us that “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. That is what being drawn to Christ’s Cross does. That’s the invitation. I have come to believe that God became Incarnate as Jesus the Christ who then suffered and died, not in order to live in our hearts, but so that we might live in his heart, become part of his body, be in total union with him. If we were in this total union with him, we would indeed be capable of forgiving the sins of another, of healing the sick, even of raising the dead. And, as we are all part of this same Body of Christ, we dare not lose even one part of that Body.
That’s why, I think, all those saints and mystics were gazing on the cross. And that’s why I think we should all follow their example. We should gaze on that Cross of Christ, not as we might look at a horror movie recoiling from all the gore. Rather, we should gaze upon that Cross and be drawn into it as something much more difficult than gore.
We should look upon our Lord and know that we have been Invited to Love in Him, through Him, and with Him. Right up there on that Cross.
AMEN.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
RCL - Palm Sunday B - 05 Apr 2009
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky
RCL - Palm Sunday B - 05 April 2009
Mark 11:1-11
Isaiah 50:4-9a
There is a quotation attributed to Rabbi Abraham Heschel, the great 20th century Jewish teacher: “God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.”
In truth, however, much of contemporary religion and spirituality is, in various guises, precisely about being nice.
Christian Smith and Melissa Denton, in a sociological study titled Soul Searching: The Religion and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press, 2005), shared the results of their extensive interviews with hundreds of American young people regarding their faith and values. The results were surprising. Across the religious and denominational landscape and across the political and geographic spectrum, most, if not all, young people seemed to share a set of basic core values about their faith. Smith and Denton summarized their findings as follows: “We suggest that the de facto dominant religion among contemporary teenagers in the United States is what we might call Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”
The characteristic core doctrines of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism included these shared beliefs
Now it is unlikely that any individual teenager would identify Moralistic Therapeutic Deism as his or her faith, and most would be hard-pressed to express themselves in precisely these scholarly terms, but the same elements appear and reappear throughout the youth culture and beyond. And on the surface, it can all sound OK. In fact, I have to confess that it sounds like what I have sometimes believed and often told others. And there can obviously be some desirable points to this faith stance.
But Moralistic Therapeutic Deism can be terribly self-serving, self-referential and self-absorbed. It can be, and all too frequently is, all about being a nice enough person, not making waves, working on self-improvement, being as successful as you can be and having a good self-image. If God gets involved at all, it’s only to straighten out some difficulties or messes or crises and bring us back to equilibrium, planting us firmly back on our own two feet. But most of the time for most adherents of this creed, God is not much involved in our lives at all, and most of us are pretty content with that, thank you very much.
Fordham theology professor Mark Massa, SJ, sees these five basic beliefs underlying Moralistic Therapeutic Deism among his many bright college students, both Catholic and non-Catholic, and he summarizes them in rather less scholarly but more trenchant terms:
God is an Earthquake.
And God is Fire.
And God is Light.
And God is Righteous
And God is Holy.
And God is Just.
And God is God.
And I am not…
And neither are you.
The dominant religion of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism may work well enough much of the time… at least until it comes up against the disturbing realities that resound throughout Holy Week, realities that constellated around Jesus and that constellate around us, human beings everywhere: misunderstanding, rejection, betrayal, slander, threat, denial, abandonment, violence, suffering, pain, death.
No… God is not nice. And people are, I’m afraid, not nice, at least not always, and maybe not even as often as we think. And what we believe and how we behave does have consequences… both for ourselves and for others, both now and in eternity.
That’s the hard truth of Holy Week. And it is a great scandal and a great disappointment for many. And it would, I fear, be a cause of general despair, were it not for one other central fact and one saving truth. And that fact and that truth is that God has stepped into this very un-nice picture, into our human situation, and willingly and out of deep love bore the worst it could offer. God stepped in to call us back to our right minds. God stepped in to mend our wounded hearts. God stepped in to show the way. God stepped in to redeem us, to save us, to effect a reconciliation that goes beyond human expectation and human understanding. God stepped in, wresting meaning out of pain and life out of death and victory out of defeat.
How did God this? He did it in Jesus. He did by the whole wonderful mystery of a life lived for others and poured out for others and raised up for others. Who can explain it? Who can understand it? I surely can’t. And perhaps we don’t have to. What we need to do rather is to bear witness to it once again. Proclaim it. And submit ourselves, our lives and our puny faith to its fiery power.
St. Gregory of Nazianzus speaking in the fourth century said: “Humanity had to be brought back to life by the humanity of God. We had to be summoned to life by his Son. Let the rest be adored in silence.”
We will soon bless our palms and carry them in procession and proclaim Christ as our King and Guide and Lord. But another ancient writer [Andrew of Crete] counsels us: let us not spread before him olive branches and palms that will fade in a few hours or garments that will wear out in a few seasons, however stylish and well made. Rather, let us spread out our very selves before him: “We who have been baptized into Christ must ourselves be the garments we spread before him…. Let our souls [lives] take the place of the welcoming branches as we join today in the children’s holy song: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the king of Israel.”
Br. Robert Sevensky
RCL - Palm Sunday B - 05 April 2009
Mark 11:1-11
Isaiah 50:4-9a
There is a quotation attributed to Rabbi Abraham Heschel, the great 20th century Jewish teacher: “God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.”
In truth, however, much of contemporary religion and spirituality is, in various guises, precisely about being nice.
Christian Smith and Melissa Denton, in a sociological study titled Soul Searching: The Religion and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press, 2005), shared the results of their extensive interviews with hundreds of American young people regarding their faith and values. The results were surprising. Across the religious and denominational landscape and across the political and geographic spectrum, most, if not all, young people seemed to share a set of basic core values about their faith. Smith and Denton summarized their findings as follows: “We suggest that the de facto dominant religion among contemporary teenagers in the United States is what we might call Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”
The characteristic core doctrines of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism included these shared beliefs
- A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
- God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
- The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
- God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.
- Good people go to heaven when they die.
Now it is unlikely that any individual teenager would identify Moralistic Therapeutic Deism as his or her faith, and most would be hard-pressed to express themselves in precisely these scholarly terms, but the same elements appear and reappear throughout the youth culture and beyond. And on the surface, it can all sound OK. In fact, I have to confess that it sounds like what I have sometimes believed and often told others. And there can obviously be some desirable points to this faith stance.
But Moralistic Therapeutic Deism can be terribly self-serving, self-referential and self-absorbed. It can be, and all too frequently is, all about being a nice enough person, not making waves, working on self-improvement, being as successful as you can be and having a good self-image. If God gets involved at all, it’s only to straighten out some difficulties or messes or crises and bring us back to equilibrium, planting us firmly back on our own two feet. But most of the time for most adherents of this creed, God is not much involved in our lives at all, and most of us are pretty content with that, thank you very much.
Fordham theology professor Mark Massa, SJ, sees these five basic beliefs underlying Moralistic Therapeutic Deism among his many bright college students, both Catholic and non-Catholic, and he summarizes them in rather less scholarly but more trenchant terms:
- God is nice.
- Most people are nice.
- Most people—except for Adolf Hitler—go to heaven.
- All other theological and ethical statements are relative, being true primarily if they work for you.
- Whatever…
God is an Earthquake.
And God is Fire.
And God is Light.
And God is Righteous
And God is Holy.
And God is Just.
And God is God.
And I am not…
And neither are you.
The dominant religion of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism may work well enough much of the time… at least until it comes up against the disturbing realities that resound throughout Holy Week, realities that constellated around Jesus and that constellate around us, human beings everywhere: misunderstanding, rejection, betrayal, slander, threat, denial, abandonment, violence, suffering, pain, death.
No… God is not nice. And people are, I’m afraid, not nice, at least not always, and maybe not even as often as we think. And what we believe and how we behave does have consequences… both for ourselves and for others, both now and in eternity.
That’s the hard truth of Holy Week. And it is a great scandal and a great disappointment for many. And it would, I fear, be a cause of general despair, were it not for one other central fact and one saving truth. And that fact and that truth is that God has stepped into this very un-nice picture, into our human situation, and willingly and out of deep love bore the worst it could offer. God stepped in to call us back to our right minds. God stepped in to mend our wounded hearts. God stepped in to show the way. God stepped in to redeem us, to save us, to effect a reconciliation that goes beyond human expectation and human understanding. God stepped in, wresting meaning out of pain and life out of death and victory out of defeat.
How did God this? He did it in Jesus. He did by the whole wonderful mystery of a life lived for others and poured out for others and raised up for others. Who can explain it? Who can understand it? I surely can’t. And perhaps we don’t have to. What we need to do rather is to bear witness to it once again. Proclaim it. And submit ourselves, our lives and our puny faith to its fiery power.
St. Gregory of Nazianzus speaking in the fourth century said: “Humanity had to be brought back to life by the humanity of God. We had to be summoned to life by his Son. Let the rest be adored in silence.”
We will soon bless our palms and carry them in procession and proclaim Christ as our King and Guide and Lord. But another ancient writer [Andrew of Crete] counsels us: let us not spread before him olive branches and palms that will fade in a few hours or garments that will wear out in a few seasons, however stylish and well made. Rather, let us spread out our very selves before him: “We who have been baptized into Christ must ourselves be the garments we spread before him…. Let our souls [lives] take the place of the welcoming branches as we join today in the children’s holy song: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the king of Israel.”
Assist us mercifully, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby you have given us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. [BCP, p. 270]
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Sermon for a memorial of Diana Smith - 28 Mar 2009
St Alban's Church, Washington, DC
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
Saturday 28 March 2009
For the past several centuries, were you to enter a church this afternoon — the Saturday before Passiontide, two weeks before Easter—you would have likely encountered a rather unusual ritual. The sexton or verger or altar guild or even the priest or parson himself would be engaged in veiling the Cross at the altar with a purple cloth, along with any other statues and images that might be in the church.
It was all a bit paradoxical. During the time of year when the Christian community was invited and encouraged to reflect on the mystery of the cross, it was hidden from plain sight. Yet this very act of hiding or veiling somehow brought it to mind all the more strongly.
It’s a common pattern. Taking away the familiar can have the effect of moving us into a deeper insight into truth precisely through the unfamiliar, the hidden, the obscure, the veiled.
Death, as the Prophet Isaiah says, is the ultimate veiling. Yet it, too, can paradoxically serve to heighten our awareness of deep truths about our world and ourselves. Much of the Christian Gospel seems to work like that.
Take today’s words of Jesus: “I am the way, the truth, the light.” On the surface, they are comfortable words. But as we know, it can be difficult to find and follow the way, and there can be pain and blindness in truth and light, in the disclosure of things known and unknown and half-known, of things seen and unseen, a disclosure that often feels like judgment. It isn’t always easy or comfortable to walk in the light, at least not at the outset. Perhaps that’s why at some level we are both fascinated by and fear death. It holds the promise and the threat of full disclosure through and beyond apparent veiling and into a radical and eternal unveiling.
These words of Jesus from the Gospel according to John, chosen by Diana to be read at this service, are echoed in the poetry of the 16th century Anglican priest George Herbert, whose verses were likewise chosen by Diana to be sung this afternoon in the achingly beautiful arrangement of Ralph Vaughn William’s Five Mystical Songs. Many of you will know well both the poem and the setting. It begins:
Taking up the words of Jesus, the poet invites the reader or the hearer to consider the Christian’s primary relationship to the Lord.
Jesus as Way: not a particular religious system so much as a certain style of being in the world, a style or stance marked by confidence that God is indeed God and that we are God’s beloved. A way marked by trust and courage, even in the face of human cruelty and irrational circumstances.
Jesus as Truth: not some propositional statement or claim on our intellect alone but the full revelation or uncovering of what is most deeply human about us, creatures of infinite longing and finite capacity, made in the image of God’s own eternal desires and designs.
Jesus as Life: that is, as the focal point and model of God’s action in animating existence and absorbing and overcoming all that would diminish or frustrate the creation.
Diana knew well that to claim Jesus as Way and Truth and Life was no easy way out, but a path through radical honesty to endless, maybe even absurd, hope. It was never for her, nor is it for anyone really, an easy way… simply the only way, and that is, the way through the heart of reality as it is and not as we would have it.
This is of course a hard teaching. Who can sustain it? Who can endure it? But the poet knows this — as did Diana — and he tells us that there is more, much more:
Light, Feast, Strength—vision, warmth, nourishment, healing, hospitality, companionship… no matter where, no matter when, no matter what. These are the gifts that sustain us at hard edges of the human condition. They are the graces, the sacraments, if you will, the others who help us and make it possible for us to go on. That made it possible for Diana to go on. You — her friends, her congregation, her family, her colleagues — incarnated that light and feast and strength for her, as I trust she did for you...
Finally, the poet sums up his gospel and ours:
He speaks of a joy that is deep and grounded and stable, not unaffected by the vagaries of life, but not destroyed by them. He speaks of a love that unites us to God and each other and empowers us for witness and service. He speaks of heart that expands to embrace the whole world with its pain and its beauty and its innate dignity. Just like the Heart of Jesus. Just like the heart of God.
All that is veiled somewhat for us today, like the crosses in the churches. But that very veiling can focus our attention and spark our imaginations. I believe that Diana invites us to ponder these texts together as we recognize how they shaped her life in quiet, gentle and faith-filled ways.
I also believe that Diana wanted us to remember that, just as the crosses in churches will be unveiled at Easter, so will hers and yours and mine. And we will discover together, no doubt in wonder and surprise, the glory of God’s unveiled face, as well as our own true faces: our own, Diana’s and each other’s.
It’s no accident that Vaughn William’s song cycle doesn’t end with, but begins with Herbert’s poem Easter:
It all begins there, whether we are aware of it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not. And it continues there until into eternity.
I knew Diana for perhaps eighteen years. She was a regular visitor at our monastery in New York, and a faithful Associate of our Order. Among her many talents, she was an accomplished teacher and once taught a course in our Elderhostel program on the history of tea. It was quintessential Diana: learned, droll, witty, gracious. More recently, she and I cooperated in leading a pilgrimage to Benedictine monastic sites in England and Wales. Though I was the monk of record, she was the brains. She had an abiding love for all things English, and the Benedictine roots of the English church shaped her Anglican faith. She knew more than I could ever hope to learn about such things, and she wore her learning with gentleness and tact.
I have to admit, though, that I didn’t know a lot about Diana, about the details of her life. She was a very private person. (Though I do know that her first job in Washington was as Librarian at the Distilled Spirits Council of America, which has to have elicited interest in her resume!) But though I didn’t know a lot of facts or details about Diana, I always felt that I knew Diana. And so, I trust, did you.
In a recent lecture given at that great Jesuit University — not Georgetown but Boston College — theology professor Fr. Michael Hines talked about the vocation of teaching. He said:
Diana was indeed that. An integer. An entity. Complete. No matter how much or little you knew of Diana or about Diana, what you always got was… Diana.
Perhaps that’s why she was so fascinated by the Benedictine monastic vision. At its heart, the monastic goal is to arrive at integrity, to leave behind the divided heart, to will the one thing necessary with singleness of heart and soul and mind. It is of course the Christian vision. It is, I daresay, the human vision. It was Diana’s vision. Let it be ours as well: yours and mine.
May Diana know at last the full reward of her searching and the fulfillment of her heart’s desires.
May she find the Way, the Truth, and the Life, along with Light, Feast, Strength, Joy, Love, Heart.
May she rest in peace. May she rise in glory.
Amen.
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
Saturday 28 March 2009
For the past several centuries, were you to enter a church this afternoon — the Saturday before Passiontide, two weeks before Easter—you would have likely encountered a rather unusual ritual. The sexton or verger or altar guild or even the priest or parson himself would be engaged in veiling the Cross at the altar with a purple cloth, along with any other statues and images that might be in the church.
It was all a bit paradoxical. During the time of year when the Christian community was invited and encouraged to reflect on the mystery of the cross, it was hidden from plain sight. Yet this very act of hiding or veiling somehow brought it to mind all the more strongly.
It’s a common pattern. Taking away the familiar can have the effect of moving us into a deeper insight into truth precisely through the unfamiliar, the hidden, the obscure, the veiled.
Death, as the Prophet Isaiah says, is the ultimate veiling. Yet it, too, can paradoxically serve to heighten our awareness of deep truths about our world and ourselves. Much of the Christian Gospel seems to work like that.
Take today’s words of Jesus: “I am the way, the truth, the light.” On the surface, they are comfortable words. But as we know, it can be difficult to find and follow the way, and there can be pain and blindness in truth and light, in the disclosure of things known and unknown and half-known, of things seen and unseen, a disclosure that often feels like judgment. It isn’t always easy or comfortable to walk in the light, at least not at the outset. Perhaps that’s why at some level we are both fascinated by and fear death. It holds the promise and the threat of full disclosure through and beyond apparent veiling and into a radical and eternal unveiling.
These words of Jesus from the Gospel according to John, chosen by Diana to be read at this service, are echoed in the poetry of the 16th century Anglican priest George Herbert, whose verses were likewise chosen by Diana to be sung this afternoon in the achingly beautiful arrangement of Ralph Vaughn William’s Five Mystical Songs. Many of you will know well both the poem and the setting. It begins:
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life as killeth death.
Taking up the words of Jesus, the poet invites the reader or the hearer to consider the Christian’s primary relationship to the Lord.
Jesus as Way: not a particular religious system so much as a certain style of being in the world, a style or stance marked by confidence that God is indeed God and that we are God’s beloved. A way marked by trust and courage, even in the face of human cruelty and irrational circumstances.
Jesus as Truth: not some propositional statement or claim on our intellect alone but the full revelation or uncovering of what is most deeply human about us, creatures of infinite longing and finite capacity, made in the image of God’s own eternal desires and designs.
Jesus as Life: that is, as the focal point and model of God’s action in animating existence and absorbing and overcoming all that would diminish or frustrate the creation.
Diana knew well that to claim Jesus as Way and Truth and Life was no easy way out, but a path through radical honesty to endless, maybe even absurd, hope. It was never for her, nor is it for anyone really, an easy way… simply the only way, and that is, the way through the heart of reality as it is and not as we would have it.
This is of course a hard teaching. Who can sustain it? Who can endure it? But the poet knows this — as did Diana — and he tells us that there is more, much more:
Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.
Light, Feast, Strength—vision, warmth, nourishment, healing, hospitality, companionship… no matter where, no matter when, no matter what. These are the gifts that sustain us at hard edges of the human condition. They are the graces, the sacraments, if you will, the others who help us and make it possible for us to go on. That made it possible for Diana to go on. You — her friends, her congregation, her family, her colleagues — incarnated that light and feast and strength for her, as I trust she did for you...
Finally, the poet sums up his gospel and ours:
Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joys in Love.
He speaks of a joy that is deep and grounded and stable, not unaffected by the vagaries of life, but not destroyed by them. He speaks of a love that unites us to God and each other and empowers us for witness and service. He speaks of heart that expands to embrace the whole world with its pain and its beauty and its innate dignity. Just like the Heart of Jesus. Just like the heart of God.
All that is veiled somewhat for us today, like the crosses in the churches. But that very veiling can focus our attention and spark our imaginations. I believe that Diana invites us to ponder these texts together as we recognize how they shaped her life in quiet, gentle and faith-filled ways.
I also believe that Diana wanted us to remember that, just as the crosses in churches will be unveiled at Easter, so will hers and yours and mine. And we will discover together, no doubt in wonder and surprise, the glory of God’s unveiled face, as well as our own true faces: our own, Diana’s and each other’s.
It’s no accident that Vaughn William’s song cycle doesn’t end with, but begins with Herbert’s poem Easter:
Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise,
Without delays.
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him may’st rise.
It all begins there, whether we are aware of it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not. And it continues there until into eternity.
I knew Diana for perhaps eighteen years. She was a regular visitor at our monastery in New York, and a faithful Associate of our Order. Among her many talents, she was an accomplished teacher and once taught a course in our Elderhostel program on the history of tea. It was quintessential Diana: learned, droll, witty, gracious. More recently, she and I cooperated in leading a pilgrimage to Benedictine monastic sites in England and Wales. Though I was the monk of record, she was the brains. She had an abiding love for all things English, and the Benedictine roots of the English church shaped her Anglican faith. She knew more than I could ever hope to learn about such things, and she wore her learning with gentleness and tact.
I have to admit, though, that I didn’t know a lot about Diana, about the details of her life. She was a very private person. (Though I do know that her first job in Washington was as Librarian at the Distilled Spirits Council of America, which has to have elicited interest in her resume!) But though I didn’t know a lot of facts or details about Diana, I always felt that I knew Diana. And so, I trust, did you.
In a recent lecture given at that great Jesuit University — not Georgetown but Boston College — theology professor Fr. Michael Hines talked about the vocation of teaching. He said:
I’ve come to think that if there is one single virtue, it’s integrity. By integrity, I don’t simply mean honesty. I mean the word literally. It’s the quality of being an integer, an entity. It’s what happens at your wake when your spouse talks to your pastor, who talks with your business partner, who speaks with your next-door neighbor, who talks with your children, who speaks with your doctor, and they all know that they knew the same person. You weren’t a series of masks worn for different relationships. You were complete.
Diana was indeed that. An integer. An entity. Complete. No matter how much or little you knew of Diana or about Diana, what you always got was… Diana.
Perhaps that’s why she was so fascinated by the Benedictine monastic vision. At its heart, the monastic goal is to arrive at integrity, to leave behind the divided heart, to will the one thing necessary with singleness of heart and soul and mind. It is of course the Christian vision. It is, I daresay, the human vision. It was Diana’s vision. Let it be ours as well: yours and mine.
May Diana know at last the full reward of her searching and the fulfillment of her heart’s desires.
May she find the Way, the Truth, and the Life, along with Light, Feast, Strength, Joy, Love, Heart.
May she rest in peace. May she rise in glory.
Amen.
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