RCL - Proper 10 B - 12 Jul 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
RCL – Proper 10 B – Sunday 12 July 2009

Amos 7:7-15
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29

Br. Randy ascending toward Fontecolombo on a pilgimage to Assisi
May 2009 - Originally uploaded by Randy OHC

"Amos, what do you see?" The Old Testament lesson from Amos appointed for today which we heard earlier is about the clash of the prophetic word of repentance and justice against the established religious and political attitudes of the status quo. This clash is a recurrent theme in the Bible and continues to be a source of conflict in our day as we ask:
- What is the relationship of Christ and culture?
- How do we maintain our distinct Christian identity while living within our own circles of influence?
- What does it mean today to listen and speak prophetically?
- What might such prophecy cost us?
- What could we achieve by it?
I’ll answer all of those questions (!), but first some context…

One way to characterize this clash is to understand the difference between city and desert. The reference is not so much to literal city and desert, although that is usually how it works. The contrast has its roots in Scripture and carries into Church history. In general terms the city is characterized by reasoned theology, the established powers and authorities, Christian or other, and the preservation of that power and authority.

The desert or wilderness, on the other hand, is characterized by its mystical experience of God and its prophetic challenge to the abuses of those established powers and authorities and as a kind of nagging conscience, reminding leaders through an unswerving obedience to the Gospel that they are ultimately accountable to God. It is from this desert tradition that Amos, John the Baptist, and other prophets burst onto the stage of the sacred text to call the people to remember who they are and turn back to God when they had drifted into disobedience and dullness of heart.

One of the mega-themes of Christian spirituality is the call out of the crowd of unconscious indifference (exemplified in enemy tribes or oppressive empires) and into the light, the awareness, the courage, the risk of prophetic words and deeds that challenge us and challenge the ruling powers to act in service of God on behalf of truth, on behalf of the poor and oppressed, on behalf of something more than their own perpetuation. Again and again we hear the same story; the people make a covenant with God and commit to living within God’s law, then they stray and rebel and become comfortable and lazy and forget who God is, who they are, and slide into slavery - spiritually or literally.

Again and again God sends the prophet, the messenger, the deliverer who wakes them up (or at least attempts to) to get them back on the right path of life and freedom and surrender to God’s guidance, direction and grace. The prophet’s job is to disturb and unmask our false security and to exclaim that we have built our house on sand - we have bought the lie that we can arrive and coast along.

The prophet creates the crisis that gets our attention and makes us aware of how much we need the help of God and the community to wake up. The unsettling blare of the prophet dares to say that we can all too easily seek the easy walls of our own prejudices rather than the constant need for repentance and humility.

While the sacred story includes both city and desert, Scripture is clearly on the side of the desert prophets because God is on the side of the poor and oppressed - those most vulnerable victims of the unjust actions of corrupt power. Amos and others are the mystical and prophetic voices breaking into the conversation in a religious environment dominated by the agenda of the city.

The desert is not a familiar theological place for most American Christians. The world of Amos’ day in the seventh century B.C is so very radically different from our own. The idea that a prophet would speak God’s very words and that those words would bear the news of God’s anger at the people’s sin and the imminent warning of punishment by exile may not fit into your image of God.

As we dare put ourselves in this story perhaps we grope for a way out by thinking- “who does he think he is?” or “that’s fine if he wants to believe that, but I don’t have to!” Amos, John the Baptist and other prophets call the whole people to repent because they knew what we conveniently forget - our silent acquiescence, our passive acceptance of the evil and injustice around us is a participation in it, is an assent to its continuation and makes us just as guilty as if we had committed the act ourselves.

Carrying the themes of city and desert into Church history, while the early church was creating a new city of God - with bishops and councils and processes and procedures, defining doctrine and battling heresies, the desert monks pick up the mantle of the wilderness prophet and through lives of uncompromising obedience to the Gospel keep the focus of the early church’s growing power and authority on the eternal. For Christians both city and desert are important.

Either alone is dangerous. The city preserves the faith and cares for the faithful. The desert spurs them on to deeper commitment and is a corrective to the allure of worldly entanglements. Each has its unique temptations: the city to accommodate and compromise with the secular to retain power and control, the desert to an isolated and formless individualism where experience is the last word.

What does the story of the city and the desert say to us today? Both the city and the desert exist within us. Our spiritual lives are a balanced tension between head and heart, letter and spirit that must be consciously tended. Neither rigid conformity to external structures nor self-centered relativistic individualism is the answer to the longing within us, but a willingness to hear and see reality unfiltered and with our whole selves.

While genuine prophets come along from time to time, the Holy Scripture is our prophetic message and the basis for discerning the truth. When we read or hear the sacred text it is God asking us “What do you see?” - in the text, in yourself, in the world? We have to be willing and open to hear this voice, because it will come at times and in ways we may not expect.

As we cultivate this stance then God will act and speak prophetically through us to the Church and the world. God is inviting us through Amos to step out into the prophetic wilderness and hear God ask us “What do you see?” As monks we hope to claim, embody, and preserve the desert tradition and keep bringing heart and spirit into all of life alongside head and letter.

One of our gifts as monks is to be a prophetic sign and witness to the world around us: to ask hard, unsettling, and challenging questions, to speak honestly, to keep ourselves mutually accountable and responsible, to resist the temptation to compromise the meaning of our lives to be liked. We do this first by a commitment to our own ongoing conversion and through nurturing spiritual freedom, joy, openness, and humility in ourselves and in our community.

While we appreciate the value of the city, we stand outside of it and use our objectivity and distance to look at it with honesty and compassion. We seek to give a real answer when God asks us “What do you see?” and then we find ways to speak what is showing up for us. The prophetic voice is concerned only with speaking God’s truth - not identifying with an agenda, not taking a side, not entering into the institutional squabbles but pointing us back toward the essentials; obedience, compassion, humility, perseverance, boldness, courage, and a clear-eyed commitment to put ourselves on the line to say and do what is right no matter the cost. To our guests we pray that the offering of this place of prayer and stillness and our journeying with you expands your commitment to listen to God, to see opportunities for truth and compassion, and to act by loving your neighbor.

In his book The Way to Love, Anthony de Mello equates love with the desire to see. He says:

The first act of love is to see reality as it truly is. And this involves the enormous discipline of dropping your desires, your prejudices, your memories, your projections, your selective way of looking, a discipline so great that most people would rather plunge headlong into good actions and service than submit to the burning fire of this asceticism. When you set out to serve someone whom you have not taken the trouble to see, are you meeting that person’s need or your own? So the first ingredient of love is to really see the other. The second ingredient is equally important to see yourself, to ruthlessly flash the light of awareness on your motives, your emotions, your needs, your dishonesty, your self-seeking, your tendency to control and manipulate. This means calling things by their name, no matter how painful the discovery and the consequences.

The prophetic alarm is not ultimately about catastrophe and condemnation - it is about conversion, it is an invitation to conversion, a conversion to love. Amos reminds us to listen for God’s question as we look around our church and our world: “What do you see?”

RCL - Feast of St Benedict - 11 Jul 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
RCL - Feast of St Benedict - Saturday 11 July 2009

Proverbs 2:1-9
Luke 14:27--33

Brs. Timothy, Scott, and Robert
Originally uploaded by Randy OHC

Today we celebrate the feast of St Benedict. Its an important feast for a number of reasons - not the least because we are Benedictine monks, but also because you could not overstate the importance of Benedictine practice on Anglican worship as it grew out of the English Reformation.

But what catches my imagination this morning is the Gospel passage assigned for this particular feast. What has it got to do with Benedict?

If you don’t pay too much attention to the Gospel passage, it appears to give a useful lesson in task management. Only idiots start projects they can not finish. And only fools start wars they can not win... Its easy for me to hear this Gospel passage as a call to careful planning and due diligence. And what could possibly be wrong with that?

But that’s a mishearing of the Gospel passage. Jesus is calling us to take up the cross and put other stuff down. Building towers and winning wars is about protecting other stuff.

There’s more to this morning’s reading: We are engaged in an enterprise that is entirely beyond us. If we look at what it will take to build the Kingdom of God, we’ll never start. If we assess what we need in the fight against evil, we will make peace with the devil... Due diligence and careful planning will arrest us in our baptized life.

We proceed because we have God - and that is our only hope. The other things that make us feel safe - those are the things we have to leave behind.

To get from the Kingdom of God to Saint Benedict we only need to swap one word: the Kingdom of God can just as easily be called the Community of God... A Godly community is at the very heart of Benedictine living, and we can only proceed to make such a community with God’s help.

Part of the joy in reflecting on the life of Benedict is that we are not encumbered by too many facts. The stories of the life of Benedict are fanciful, though that doesn’t mean they are not true. But since we start in the fanciful, we can add to the fanciful...

Benedict’s first leadership position was a good learning opportunity - That’s what people say of things that don’t turn out well. In the good old days we might have even used the word failure...

Benedict had developed a good reputation and was a highly regarded monk. And a certain monastic community was in need of an Abbot. Not only did they need an Abbot, they desperately needed reform. It was a community in trouble, in chaos and they knew it. They sought out Benedict to be their Abbot... to come and fix their problems.

They desperately wanted to change. And they adamantly wanted to stay just exactly the same. This is a timeless human reality. I want to do what I’m doing now and, through some miraculous intervention in which someone else does all the work, have a better outcome...

Benedict arrives at this troubled community and proceeds to do what they want him to do. He tries to shape them up. He reproves and corrects and scolds them vigorously.

So, naturally, they conspire to kill him. What else could they do? ... They give him venom meddled with wine - you don’t often see that on the wine list... But when Benedict blesses the wine before drinking, the vessel shatters and Benedict’s life is saved.

Before going to war, a smart leader makes an assessment as to whether or not he or she can win - and if the answer is no, then negotiations begin. In this first attempt, it appears that Benedict went to war and lost.

Here is my own fanciful embellishment: a possibility that has no factual support, but could be true.

The rule of Benedict is not the only Monastic Rule. It is not the oldest. And it surely is not the most thorough. The Rule of the Master is far more comprehensive, to say the least. Scholars are unsure which came first, but the Rule of the Master and the Rule of Benedict are closely related. They are, in some ways, shadows of each other.

In the legend according to me... When Benedict entered that first monastery, it was the Rule of the Master that he sought to impose.

Just so that we all have a clear sense of the Rule of the Master, let me read a little bit... Naturally I was drawn to a section called “Whether brothers who have suffered pollution during sleep should receive communion or not.” But, alas, there is no comparable passage in Benedict, so I’ll have to leave you wondering about the answer...

Lets consider instead: “The Porters of the Monastery”

The Lord has replied through the Master (that’s the way all answers begin in the Rule of the Master - which pretty much forecloses flexibility)

Inside near the gates of the monastery a cell is to be built for two brothers advanced in age. Posted there, let them at all times close up the monastery behind those who leave and open if for those who are coming in, and also announce arrivals to the abbot.

Every day during the periods devoted to reading in the monastery, however, these two old men must see to it that they lock the gates and join the community to listen to the readers. In like manner, when the signal for the Divine Office has sounded in the oratory they are to lock the gates and be present at the Word of God in the oratory.

The Master then gives a lengthy discourse on the manual labor that can be asked of these two old men. The Master also tells us where in the refectory these two are to be seated. It’s thorough, detailed, and very specific. Nothing is left to chance or discretion.

Benedict, on the other hand, says “At the door of the monastery, place a sensible old man who knows how to take a message and deliver a reply, and whose age keeps him from roaming about.” He follows this with a short discourse on how the porter is to greet arriving guests, an important ministry of hospitality entirely absent in the Rule of the Master.

In the legend of Benedict according to me, Benedict learns the hard way that too much control is a human thing, not a Godly thing. The instinct to make sure that everybody is doing the right thing every waking moment of every single day, and at night as well, is understandable. It is what the Rule of the Master seeks to do. But it is dehumanizing. It is life depriving.

From that experience, I think, comes the Rule of Benedict which calls us to a thoughtful, responsible way of living; a way of being fully alive, fully human. It is a joyful response to God’s love, not a carefully planned prosecution of the task at hand.

If we think about what it will cost us to live in community, we will never live in community. If we have to work out all the details in advance, we will never build the Community of God. And whatever we build will be ours, not God’s. Sensible, orderly, safe alternatives are simply not on offer.

This morning’s Gospel reading calls us to move forward in faith, not in certainty. By faith we will build the Community of God. By faith we will triumph in the ageless battle against evil. Following Jesus means being faithful, not careful. We must give up our need for control... our need to fortify.

Benedict gives us a framework in which to live into our faith - a way of ordering a community that calls us to creative, faithful life rather than stifled order.

So what a joy it is to celebrate this Saint Benedict’s day in the Order (and occasional disorder) of the Holy Cross, in the order, (and occasional disorder) of the Episcopal Church, in the order (and occasional disorder) of the universal church.

RCL - Proper 9 B - 05 Jul 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC - Superior
RCL – Proper 9 B – Sunday 05 July 2009

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13


Over last year or two I have had a growing fascination with the questions that are posed in Sacred Scriptures. Not questions about Scripture or God, but the literal questions that are peppered throughout the Bible, questions that God or Jesus direct to us, or that others direct to God or Jesus, or that people direct to each other. From the very beginning of the Bible (Gen 3: “Where are you?”) to almost its very end (Rev. 17 “Why are you amazed?”), Scripture is filled with questions.

Part of the inspiration for this interest is the famous quote from the German poet Rilke, who writes in Letters to a Young Poet:

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

I began to offer a series of retreat reflections that I called Living the Questions and focused on such biblical themes as: Where are you? What is your name? Who sent you? What do you want me to do for you? Where is your faith? Who do people say that I am? What shall I do to gain eternal life? Indeed, one can construct a rather complete systematic theology on the basis of scriptural questions alone.

I have also come to recognize some truths about the questions and about our responses.

1. The questions are perennial
2. Questions are not so much problems to be solved than mysteries to be entered into.
3. Our responses or answers do not represent unfaithfulness, even if they are sometimes premature and always partial. Thinking and feeling our way through to an answer, however provisional, is one of the ways we have of claiming for our own, in this generation and in this time, what are eternal truths.
4. Our responses or answers need always to be revisited, revised, or reappropriated. Time and life change me and thus change my relationship to the question and to the questioner and indeed to my own self. It is almost as if a spiritual Indeterminacy Principle is operative here.

It is in this spirit that I want to approach today’s Gospel reading.

Today Jesus goes home after performing some spectacular actions. He has cured the woman afflicted with hemorrhage and raised Jairus’ daughter. He has cast out demons. He has taught with authority. And now he goes home. And as is often the case, familiarity breeds, if not contempt, at least suspicion. We are all familiar with this phenomenon at some level. How can the person whose quirks and idiosyncrasies we know all too well for far too long perform so surprisingly, act so nobly, or speak so eloquently? We may experience a mix of amazement and awe, envy and irritation.

In the kind of society that Jesus came from—a traditional peasant society where social roles were exacting and stratified and rigid and where family honor was everything—a performance like Jesus’ in today’s Gospel was not greeted with unalloyed joy. Such a surprising move outside the norms of his social and educational class made Jesus seem… uppity. And in his kind of culture, that’s dangerous. It can draw unwelcome attention to one’s self and to one’s family. It challenges the social structure. It represents a break with the past and the status quo. And it may mean that the power elite may be threatened or one’s equals may feel shamed or cheated. Or both.

As contemporary Western people, and especially as Americans, we are groomed to applaud personal advancement and risk taking, at least on the surface. Everyone can be famous…at least for the proverbial fifteen minutes. But even with us, it’s often a mixed bag. I remember in own childhood the endless variations on the theme, “Who do they think they are?” Whether it was Helen Harbena inviting Msgr. Timlin over for Sunday dinner or Janey Ellis going to NYU or the Svetlovic family going to an especially exotic vacation in the Poconos: Who do they think they are?

Social anthropologists have had a field day analyzing the dynamics of traditional societies, including biblical societies, where any departure from the conventional, level social roles is met with deep suspicion, envy and even violence, both physical or magical.

We see the something in today’s Gospel. Listen again to the passage from Eugene Peterson’s scripture paraphrase The Message:

Jesus left there and returned to his hometown. His disciples came along. On the Sabbath, he gave a lecture in the meeting place. He made a real hit, impressing everyone. "We had no idea he was this good!" they said. "How did he get so wise all of a sudden, get such ability?"

But in the next breath they were cutting him down: "He's just a carpenter—Mary's boy. We've known him since he was a kid. We know his brothers, James, Justus, Jude, and Simon, and his sisters. Who does he think he is?" They tripped over what little they knew about him and fell, sprawling. And they never got any further.

Do you hear that movement from “Wow!” to “How dare he?”

But what fascinates me even more about this incident is that while we educated, contemporary Western Christians might not share in this dynamic of suspicion and covert control—though I think we do, in fact, at many levels—the questions that Jesus’ neighbors ask about him are right on the money. That is, they are perennial questions and they are questions that you and I continue to ask and need to ask ourselves again and again about Jesus and about what we make of him and his message.

There are five questions. Let us reflect on each of them very briefly:

Where did this man get all this?

How did Jesus come to have such presence and teaching authority and charisma? We know something of his life story. He didn’t come from the educated classes; he didn’t have training, leisure, connections, status…all the usual prerequisites of the influential. How was it possible that such a man could have gained a hearing in his world and change history? And more importantly, why does such a man still have a hearing in our world today? And why should we listen?

What is the wisdom that has been given to him?

I ask this myself. What is Jesus’ wisdom? And what is his message? It is a wisdom based not on theory but on a shrewd experiential knowledge of the world as it and at the same time, on a rock solid faith in the power of love to change that world and on the force of vision of a new Kingdom available particularly to the poor, the sinner, the odd, the outcast. What does such wisdom mean for today?

What deeds of power are being done by his hands?

That Jesus did deeds of power—miracles, surprising acts, marvels, healings, exorcisms, feedings—is beyond doubt. What are we to make of them? How are we to understand them, if we are to understand them? And are they still being done today? Are we missing something?

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?

Isn’t this a human being, an ordinary man of flesh and blood, with a history, a family, and a heritage, with hopes, dreams, and desires and limitations of his own? Yes, emphatically yes, says our Christian faith. But how is God present in such concrete conditions? Indeed, how is God incarnate in them? How is God’s will worked out in his ordinary life? And in yours? And in mine?

…and are not his sisters here with us?

Is not the family of Jesus present with us still? Where and how? In the Church? In Anaheim? Here? In the poor? In the power brokers and opinion shapers? In the obscure depths of an Auschwitz or a Darfur or a homeless shelter? In the prosperity of successful believer? In lives lived well…everywhere?

The questions are, in fact, boundless. And our answers or responses are limitless. But we must go on asking these questions, of ourselves and of each other, along with Jesus’ family and neighbors. Because we are in fact Jesus’ family and Jesus’ neighbors. Nor do we hope to get a final answer. Rather, along with Rilke, we hope that by asking and dwelling in the questions we will be drawn closer and closer to the One who is both the eternal Problem and the everlasting Mystery, the original Question and the answer to all questions, who is both Source and End. We must keep asking until we come face to face with Him in eternity. Then, and only then, will our questioning cease.

Maybe.