RCL - Proper 21C - September 26, 2010 - Br. James

Christ Church Cathedral, Hartford, CT

Br. James Michael Dowd, OHC

RCL - Proper 21C - September 26, 2010

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31

Let's Listen to Moses and the Prophets

In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This morning's Gospel passage from St. Luke is one of the more famous ones and throughout the Church's history has been used by many a preacher to illustrate God's wrath and the torments of hell that one will endure if they fail to live up to God's commandments. There are medieval sermons and paintings that are quite gruesome in their depictions of the suffering that the Rich Man received as punishment. But this is, after all, a story and I think it is important to not focus so much on these particular torments, but rather to get to the point of the story. And the first place to start is with the names of the characters.

Names are very important in Jewish culture and were often meant to indicate the type of character, temperament, and spiritual outlook of the individual. The Rich Man doesn't have a name. Yes, it is true that the Rich Man has often been called Dives, but that's simply the Latin for Rich Man. That which is important to him – his wealth – is how he is identified. Lazarus, on the other hand, is a derivative of the Hebrew Eleazar, which translates as “God is my help.” And so, that which is important to him – God – is how he is identified.

And right there, we have the first, and perhaps, most important distinction of these two men. The Rich Man is all about his money and enjoys his family, his friends, sumptuous feasting, great respect, the good life. His reward is in the present and will die with him. Lazarus, is all about God's help – and quite frankly, that help is not particularly evident in the present as he lies there at the gate of the Rich Man, begging for food, being ignored, while having dogs lick his wounds. His reward, it would seem, is yet to come. In a culture where names actually mean something this alone is quite a statement.

If we pay close attention to the story we see that Jesus is not condemning the Rich Man because he is wealthy. He is condemning him because, as we were taught in the First Letter to Timothy, “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” for “those who are rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires.” The Rich Man fell into the temptation of narcissism, to be totally self-involved, of being more concerned with his own desire to gorge himself, than to throw even a few crumbs to a starving man outside his front door.

Money is not evil. In fact, a great deal of good for the Kingdom of God can be done with it. Being wealthy is not sinful. In fact, many wealthy people contribute to the building of the Kingdom. But wealth and all the comforts that go with it are a particularly dangerous temptation. If we hoard our wealth, if we do not share our wealth, if we ignore those who are not wealthy, then we face serious danger of losing our souls. Our souls belong to what we love. Where you place your love, is that which determines whether you are living a Christian life or not. God has already redeemed the world in Christ Jesus. So our choice, like the choice given to both the Rich Man and Lazarus is either to live a life that leads to heaven or to hell.

Now knowing how to live a life that leads to heaven as opposed to hell isn't so easy. But if we take the advice of Jesus to “listen to Moses and the Prophets” I think we get some good direction. This morning's reading from the Prophet Jeremiah seems, read out of context, a bit like an ad for Century 21. Jeremiah is told by the Lord to buy some land, he then enlists his cousin Hanamel to broker the deal, closes on the property by paying a considerable amount of money, signs the paperwork, and buries the deeds in an earthenware jar on the property for safekeeping.

What does this have to do with choosing heaven instead of hell? Well, in context, I think the message is clearer. All these real estate transactions are happening while Jeremiah is being confined by the Jewish King Zedekiah, in order to attempt to muzzle him; while the Babylonian army is besieging Jerusalem, and on the brink of overrunning it. Jeremiah has been calling the people to repentance and to amend their ways, all the while, standing with those same sinful people and passionately telling them of God's love and mercy. A symbol of that love and mercy is Jeremiah spending his own money – note that he was wealthy enough to purchase land – while a foreign army was about to overrun that land, so that he could communicate to his people that while some hell on earth was about to happen to them during the battle and with the ensuing exile, God would be with them and would one day restore them to their land where houses would be built, and fields would produce food, and vineyards would yield fruit.

Jeremiah stands with the oppressed of his land and points them to God with both his words and his actions. He does not abandon them when the going gets tough for him, or when the economy has soured, or while enemies are at the gates. He communicates to them with both his actions and his words that he believes in the God of mercy and love so much, that he is willing to invest in the future of their land by giving his treasure to it, even while an invading army is about to overrun it. Jeremiah's name, I might add, means “the Lord exalts.”

I've been thinking a good deal about these readings and how they apply to our own time. I think we are living through a difficult time. We are still fighting a war in Afghanistan. We continue to occupy Iraq. Neither country seems any closer to true peace than it was at the beginning of those wars. Terrorism continues to frighten us out of our sensible minds, poverty is on the rise, some are threatening to take newly acquired health care away from the most vulnerable, unemployment is at unacceptable levels, many good people have lost their homes. Lazarus seems to continue to starve right at our front gates.

And so there is great anger in the land. What fascinates me is not that there is anger, what fascinates me is who is angry. It is not the poor, the homeless, those who are going to lose their health insurance who are out making spectacles of themselves. No, the angry are a mob of people who continue to feast like the Rich Man, all the while heaping scorn, or worse, ignoring, the many Lazarus among us. People of means who are outraged that this country would attempt to actually assist those most in need. The irony of all this, is that many of these same people have named themselves Christian.

I could only wonder as this angry mob marched on Washington, presuming to compare themselves to a legitimate Prophet, Martin Luther King, as to whether they would halt their marching long enough in order to actually see those who suffer from poverty. I could only wonder if they would cease their chanting long enough to actually hear the cries of the homeless and unemployed, whom they trample with their marches. I could only wonder what a great heaven these folks could attain if they only put half of that angry energy to work for God's Kingdom. And then I remembered the words of Jesus and recalled that he ended the story by saying “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” And I wondered.

But wonder must always lead to prayer. Because a Christian must never lose hope, and prayer is the key to hope. When we choose to hoard our personal or communal wealth we lose our names, we lose our souls. When we choose to share it – especially when times are tough – we earn our names, we gain our souls.

My sisters and brothers, now is the time for us to place all of our hope in God, just as Jeremiah – he who is exalted – did in very difficult times. My brothers and sisters, today is the day in which we must totally place our faith in God, just as Lazarus – God is my help – did in awful personal circumstances. All of you good women and men, the Lord speaks to us today, this morning, here in Hartford, and he calls us to care for the poor, the oppressed, the hopeless, and even the angry among us, just as Jesus - God is our Salvation – did.

When we do this, when we choose hope instead of anger; when we choose to heap the plates of the poor with food, rather than scorn; when we choose heaven instead of hell; we will then have the right to call ourselves Christians, for we would have listened to Moses and the Prophets and Jesus the Christ. AMEN.

RCL - Proper 21C - September 26, 2010 - Br. Scott

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Borden, OHC

RCL - Proper 21C - September 26, 2010

Amos 6:1a, 4-7

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Luke 16:19-31

In today's reading from the Gospel According to Luke we encounter the parable that previous generations would have known as the story of Dives and Lazarus. Its been the subject of musical composition, paintings, and such. Its one of the most portrayed stories in the Bible – probably because of its depiction of hell. For those looking for fire and brimstone – here it is...

These days its notable that Dives has been stripped of his name – he's now just “a rich man.” Dives never really was his name, just an adjective meaning, of course, rich man...

Lazarus, who had nothing in this world, has been allowed to keep his name – though his name is also, in a sense, an adjective. Lazarus is a form of Eliazar – which means “God is my help.”

Dives is rich and needs no help, and Lazarus is desperately poor and needs all the help he can get.

The presence of a proper name (or names in the days of Dives and Lazarus) leads some people to read this parable in strange ways. Parables, after all, don't contain names. They contain general references like “there was a man...” or “there was a man with a wine press...” Some believe this story is biographical; that it tells about specific people and their lives, and more importantly, their after-lives.

But the story is a parable – there is just no doubt about that. Dives and Lazarus are archetypes – not individuals.

The rich man, lets just call him Dives, isn't just rich – he is the definition of rich. He has nothing to do all day long except be rich. His clothes are as lavish as any royal garment, that's what the color purple tells us. And they are made of the same material as the highest of priestly attire, that's what fine linen tells us. The entrance to his home is as grand as the entrance to the Temple or the Governors palace – in translation the word gate is all that appears, but a word like “portico” might be more accurate. He leads a life of total abundance and comfort.

And Lazarus, the one whom God helps, is the definition of poor. Lame, covered with sores, the dogs who lick his wounds. He has nothing and no one.

Dogs licking his wounds is, in human terms, just one more insult. But Luke may have something more subtle in mind. Dogs, by nature – that is to say by the way God made them, lick their wounds. It is a form of cleaning and of comfort. It promotes healing and helps reduce infection... not that I recommend it...

If we can get beyond the initial “ick” factor, the dogs are, in their way and to the best of their ability, comforting and caring for Lazarus. They are doing what people, especially the rich man Dives, do not do. The dogs, in some way, are telling us about God's love.

And then both the rich man and the poor man die – this story does not linger on narrative... I love how it is just assumed that the rich man goes to hell – no discussion needed. And now he learns what Lazarus's life has been like – he learns suffering and pain. He also apparently learns compassion, for his greatest concern is for those he loves, that they might learn in life what he has only learned in death.

But the answer is that his family, his loved ones, already know what they need to know. If Moses and the prophets are not enough, nothing more will help – not even someone rising from the dead.

The economic realities of Jesus time were different than ours. Wealth was a zero sum game in that time. We take for granted that wealth can be created, as it were, from nothing. My wealth increasing does not depend on someone else's wealth decreasing. We live in a world where wealth can easily expand.

But in Jesus time, if I got richer, it meant someone else had to get poorer. It was a finite world. The amount of gold that could be found, or the amount of grain that could be harvested from a plot of land, didn't expand easily. A bad year could destroy the harvest, but in a good year, an acre of land could yield only so much. Wealth was more or less fixed. For Dives to win, someone, namely Lazarus, had to loose. You couldn't have one without the other.

So Dives had a real obligation to Lazarus. From its earliest days, Jewish law required giving to the poor. And Dives response to Lazarus was, in the internet parlance of today, an epic fail.

Jesus is not telling us about some past failure or future punishment in this parable. He's telling us about how we fail in the present.

Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep. I give you a new commandment, love one another as I have loved you. Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. We know the texts just as Dives knew Moses and the Prophets...

We, unlike Dives and Lazarus, live in a world where new wealth can be created at unfathomable rates; where billions of dollars can wink into existence on the stock exchange in a good day of trading. On a bad day, they can just as quickly wink away...

Dives no longer requires Lazarus. In order for me to increase in wealth, it is not necessary for someone else to loose. What does this story have to say to us today?

I want to turn to the poet Edith Sitwell and her profound poem “Still Falls the Rain.” The poem was written in 1940 when World War II was beginning to rage. This poem, like so many, was given a nearly perfect musical setting by Benjamin Britten.

I'll read just a portion:

Still falls the Rain – Dark as the world of man, black as our loss -

Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails upon the cross.

[…]

Still falls the Rain At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.

Christ – that each day, each night, nails there - have mercy on us -

On Dives and on Lazarus:

Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

[…]

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man was once a child

who among beasts has lain -

'Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood for thee'.

Dives failure was not that he was rich. His failure was that he did not show Lazarus even the kindness that the dogs showed. He provided no food, bandaged no wounds, provided no comfort, showed no compassion.

And what of us? We have Moses... We have the Prophets. Take for example Amos who we heard from this morning: “Alas for those who are at ease – they shall be the first to go into exile... the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.”

We have the Gospels and new testament as well... for example, the letter to Timothy we heard from this morning: “As for those who are rich in the present age... they are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share...”

By any measure we are materially blessed. The amount of wealth in the United States today is unfathomable.

And we have hungry people, sick people who can't afford basic medical care, old people who are warehoused, mentally ill people who are sometimes left abandoned on our streets and other times locked away in prisons.

Dives asks Abraham to warn his loved ones and Abraham replies: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

Someone has come to us from the dead – someone we will encounter again as we gather around the Altar for Eucharist. We have all that Dives' family had and more...

Yet look around, listen to our social discourse, to our political leaders. Some of the most heartless voices are not those of the godless, but those who claim to be devout Christians. Look at how some of us grow ever richer – with Lazarus in our midst. The terrible conclusion forms in my mind: Abraham was right. We will not listen even if someone should rise from the dead... Our failure is epoch.

Yet Jesus story is not one of hopelessness. Edith Sitwell's poem is not one of hopelessness. Jesus is risen and comes to us again and again and again. My prayer is that each day we can listen more closely to Moses, to the Prophets, to the Gospel; that each day we can be better servants of God's love.

The Feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross

The Crucifix Cross in the Monastic Enclosure Gardens

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Charles Mizelle, n/OHC

Feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross, September 14, 2010

Isaiah 45:21-25
Galatians 6:14-18
John 12:31-36a

The Old Rugged Cross of Hollywood

In the name of God who calls us to celebration, who calls us to pursue community in our world, and who calls us to compassion in the midst of all human suffering. Amen!

Los Angeles is famous for its freeway corridors and one of its most infamous is the Cahuenga Pass—the Cahuenga Pass is a 2 mile stretch slicing through the Hollywood Hills connecting the city of Los Angeles with the San Fernando Valley. Traffic moves so slowly through this freeway link you’ll have time to take in some of LA’s most notable landmarks: Universal Studio’s and the City Walk theme park, the Hollywood Bowl, the John Anson Ford amphitheater, and then that celebrity hotspot that will always be near and dear to my own heart, “Charles For Total Image”, the first day spa I ever owned. (It was the 80’s.)

But one of the most notable Hollywood landmarks in Cahuenga Pass is a large white cross, up on a hill, (a hill that could even mimic Golgatha), illuminated at night, impossible for drivers to miss regardless of which direction they are driving, standing silent witness and watching over all of Hollywood.

I lived in LA for over 22 years and I most likely drove by this cross a thousand times. Occasionally I wondered who put there, who cares for it, and why hasn’t some anti-christian, separation-of-church-and-state-fanatic, complained. But I never once heard about this cross in the news. It just endured. Like a patron saint for freeway drivers the cross was always there looking over our frantic lives. And if my recent Google Search was accurate the old rugged cross of Cahuenga Pass is still standing and watching over Hollywood.

Now a bit more than 100 miles outside of Los Angeles stands another cross. This one stands in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It is maybe seen by a handful a people a year. But chances are YOU have heard of this cross. It stands on a small patch of land in the Mojave Desert as a war memorial cross. It has not faired nearly as well as the Hollywood Cross. In 2001 a self-identified Roman Catholic brought a law suit claiming the presence of the cross on a government owned preserve violated the First Amendment. The ACLU got involved and quickly two opposing sides formed: one for religious freedom and liberty, another to remove all images of religion from public places. The saga of the Mojave Desert War Memorial Cross has been covered by national media, the subject of political talking heads, with its destiny ending up at the Supreme Court. Even some last minute wrangling to change ownership of the land where the cross stood met with defeat.

When it comes to symbols of the Christian faith, there is no more powerful of a symbol than the cross. The mere mention of a cross can insight devotion, reverence, hope, even awe, but for others it is despised, maligned, ridiculed, discounted, denied, and yes, hated. For Christians the cross holds an incredible special place in their faith. But I am not so sure the cross belongs to just the Christian community. As symbol the cross is complex, multi-layered, multi-dimensional, and is so much bigger than we can understand.

One symbol of the cross I find most fascinating is the cross as jewelry. Throughout my professional career I had a hobby of noticing how frequently a cross was worn as jewelry. Just about every woman I knew, and many men, have a cross in their jewelry collection. Rarely was it worn as symbol of faith. Maybe it was grandmothers cross, a family heirloom, a gift from a significant other, or just a treasured piece of jewelry from a favorite designer. Crosses are “in” when it comes to jewelry. Part of my hobby in observing this cultural phenomenon is knowing that the crucifixion of Christ on a cross happened in a very small window of time. If Christ had lived only a few decades earlier or later, most likely he would not have been put to death by crucifixion on a cross. Most likely he would had been stoned. The gospels give us several accounts of Jesus slipping through the hands of an angry mob who were ready to stone him to death. Shortly after his death, resurrection and ascension we have the account of Stephen being stoned to death in the book of Acts. So here’s my question: If Jesus had been stoned instead of hung on a cross, would we all want to wear little rocks around our neck? (Maybe I should leave that as a rhetorical question.)

Today is an important Feast Day for us. After all our name is the Order of the Holy Cross. And we celebrate this feast at Holy Cross Monastery. And as Christians the sacrificial act of Christ giving his life on a cross is the center point of our faith. So why am I fascinated with jewelry crosses worn by millions more as a cultural symbol than a symbol of faith and religion? Because it goes to the point that the cross is embedded in our psychic DNA. And when I say “our psychic DNA” I do not mean us as Christians, but us as human beings. The cross is a symbol that reaches beyond the walls of churches and cathedrals into the wider culture. It is a symbol that has permeated all of humankind, both Christian believer and non-believer. When the Red Cross arrives to give aid in an emergency they will be a welcome sight to both Christian and non-Christian. I never heard of anyone refusing to fly SwissAir airlines because their logo is a big white cross. Even the Persian rug in my cell, woven by nomadic peoples of Iran, has a plethora of crosses in it. So many that the cross is actually a dominant design theme of the rug. Think about it--there is no corner of the globe, there is no 3rd or 4th world country you can escape to where the symbol of the cross is not known. Crawl into a cave to see the hieroglyphics of long ago or look at the graffiti of today and you’ll find the symbol of the cross. As symbol the cross is inescapable. It is as if God has impregnated the cross for all time and for all people. Why?

The cross is the great symbol of the Christian tradition but it is also a great symbol of the human experience. Wether you encounter the cross over a freeway or in a desert it says so many things to each of us at the same time it is hard to unpack its full meaning. To a Christian the cross speaks of salvation, redemption, forgiveness, transformation, even union with God. But to all of humankind it speaks to our interconnectedness, our oneness with all. It speaks to our brokenness, to the dilemma of the human condition, and shows the way to hope. Like it or not, accept it on not, the cross is constantly calling to all of humankind to return to our home in God.

Today’s Gospel text from John records Jesus as saying “when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself”. Biblical scholars have always seen this as a direct reference to Moses and the young Hebrew nation lifting a serpent on a cross to bring protection and healing during their 40 years of roaming the Sinai Desert. This pre-Babylonian symbol remains to this day as the symbol (logo) of the American Medical Association. There is another symbol of the cross the Hebrews gave us during their 40 years of being lost in the desert. God instructed them to build a tabernacle, a place of worship, a place to encounter God’s direct presence. Many engineers have tried to replicate the design of the wilderness tabernacle according to the blueprint that God gave to Moses and is recorded in the Book of Exodus. If you have ever launched on a read-through-the-Bible-campaign in a year it is these laborious chapters of Exodus, seemingly filled with only minutia where many give up on trying to read through the Bible. But there is a beautiful gem there that mostly goes unnoticed. God gave explicit instructions as to how the 12 tribes of Israel were to set up their camps around the tabernacle. Three tribes to the north, 3 tribes to the south. Three tribes to the west and 3 to the east. From God’s “arial” point of view this would form the shape of a perfect cross moving through the wilderness. And in the cross section of this human cross was where God tabernacled with His people. The story of the Exodus and the people of Israel wandering through the wilderness is the most frequently repeated story in scripture. And I see it as the first parable of scripture.

Later, the temples built by both David and Solomon followed this design element. In fact, it is a design element that has endured to this day. When you enter a Cathedral, an arial view will reveal it is shaped like a cross with the nave forming the vertical bar, the transept forming the horizontal. The intersection of the two is where you will find the altar, where God wants to tabernacle with us.

Not even a Dan Brown novel could reveal to us all the places the symbol of the cross appears throughout the world. Like the seemingly unnoticed, unbothered, old-rugged cross of Hollywood the cross is always before us. Sometimes it is obvious, sometimes it is hidden. In every land, every culture, every demographic, every time zone and every climate zone the cross of Jesus is there calling us back to God. Calling us to the intersection of life where God waits tabernacle with you and I.

Amen!

RCL - Proper 18C - September 5, 2010

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. James Dowd, OHC

RCL - Proper 18C - September 5, 2010

Jeremiah 18:1-11

Philemon 1-21

Luke 14:25-33

Hating Your Loved Ones

Every time I hear some pious politician talk about “protecting marriage” or “family values” I think of the passage that we just heard from the Gospel according to St. Luke, and I have to chuckle just a little to myself. Nothing like Jesus telling us to hate our families to get FOX News all worked up.

The readings we heard today from our Scriptures are difficult, to say the least. But they are crucial readings for a deeper understanding of the Christian life and, especially in the case of the readings from Jeremiah and Luke, particular insights into the monastic life as well.

Let's start with St. Luke, and that verse that just blares out at me every time I read it or hear it: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” The notes in the NRSV – the translation of the Scriptures that we use, state that, really, St. Matthew's version of this passage is the more accurate meaning to Jesus' words. Matthew says “Whoever loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me...” (Mt. 10:37). The notes in the New Jerusalem Bible say that the word “hate” is a Hebraism, which is defined as a “linguistic feature typical of Hebrew occurring especially in another language” (The Free On-Line Dictionary). This can actually refer to either Hebrew or Aramaic. In other words, the Aramaic word for “hate”, which Jesus would have spoken in, does not translate well into Greek, which is the language St. Luke wrote in, which then got translated into English. Our English word for “hate” just does not mean what the Aramaic word for “hate” means.

OK...that still didn't make me sleep any better this week. This bothers me, and always has. I've heard the explanations many times before and, intellectually, I accept them. But something has always bothered me about how easily we seem to sweep this under the rug. In our time we seem to desperately want to rid ourselves of the meaning of this passage.

A recent edition of The Christian Century (8/10/10) had as its lead an article entitled “Our God is Too Nice.” Its focus was on how we adults are passing along our faith tradition to our teenagers. The emphasis, in this rather progressive bi-weekly, was that in recent decades we have just gone too far in softening up both the language and the message of Christianity, in an attempt to reconcile the language of our ancient faith with the rather contemporary language and message of the therapeutic culture so evident in Western society at this time.

The author of the article, Kenda Creasy Dean is a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, and she quotes the National Study of Youth and Religion that sees “an alternative faith in American teenagers [developing] that feeds on and gradually co-opts if not devours established religious traditions. This faith, called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, generally does not and cannot stand on its own.” Teenagers would not be getting this stuff if we adults hadn't already, to a large extent, bought into it.

So what is being devoured? Well, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism espouses a philosophy, I'll not call it theology, that teaches that God is nice and wants us to be nice too. It teaches us that the main purpose of life is to be happy and fulfilled, and that most, if not all religions, teach basically the same thing.

Now, let's go back to that Gospel passage. Hate your father and mother. Hate life itself. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Give up all your possessions.

Doesn't sound very nice to me.

Now the truth is that I don't believe Jesus meant the word “hate” the way we understand the word “hate” in our language. Jesus was clear throughout the Gospel that he had come to fulfill the Law, not break or destroy it, and the Fifth Commandment requires that we honor our father and mother – not hate them. So I am not so hung up on the specific word “hate” but rather on the whole passage. It is not nice, it is not therapeutic, it is not about happiness. And sometimes when I hear this particular passage, like some teenagers I have known, I want to stamp my feet and storm out of the room, yelling “it's not fair, you're mean”. But if I behaved that way, my guess is that the Superior would want to have a little chat with me.

I don't think Jesus is mean, but I do think Jesus is tough. And his call to discipleship is really tough. Nothing about our calling as Christians is meant to be nice or happy. Loving God more than our closest relatives and friends, giving away our cherished possessions, being willing to carry our cross and die, if necessary, is not about our therapeutic needs. It is about being totally immersed in this man-God, this Jesus Christ.

This total immersion is a kind of clinging to God, in Christ Jesus, that enables us to become Christ's Body in the world. This clinging is not of this world, rather, clinging to God in Christ Jesus is an attempt to incarnate the wisdom of the Gospel into our very being. To allow the Word to become our flesh.

Now the monastic tradition has a good deal to say about this. Some examples: About the year 400, John Cassian teaches us in his First Conference that the great desert father, Abba Moses, stated that “to cling to God unceasingly and to remain inseparably united to him...is impossible for the person who is enclosed in perishable flesh.” But he goes on to say “but we ought to know where we should fix our mind's attention and to what goal we should always recall our soul's gaze.” Because it is there, in our very souls, “that the kingdom of God can be established in us.” (Conference 1: XIII.1-2).

St. Seraphim of Sarov, one of the great Russian Orthodox monks who lived in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries was heavily influenced by Cassian and taught that “the true goal of the Christian life consists in the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God (Boosalis: The Joy of the Holy, p. 35).

In the early Twentieth Century, another monk, this time in the Benedictine tradition, Blessed Columba Marmion, the Abbot of Mardesous Abbey, expanded on this theme when he wrote, rather simply, “never forget this truth, a man is worth that which he seeks, that to which he is attached. Are you seeking God? Are you tending towards him with all the fervor of your soul?” Or, are “you seeking the creature – gold, pleasures, honors...” etc. (Marmion: Christ the Ideal of the Monk, p. 598). That which you seek, you become.

I think that's what St. Luke meant by hating your relatives, giving away all your possessions, carrying your cross and even being willing to die. We are called to cling, to be attached, to one being – Jesus Christ. If we are to be Christ's disciple, then we are to count the cost as one building a tower and that cost can be dear. To cling to Mom or Dad, spouse, children, or even your own life indicates that the relationship you cling to is of more value to you than your relationship with God. To cling to a possession, means that the possession is of more value to you than God. As I said, tough stuff.

Why does God require us to strip away all that we cling to? Well, the way God put it to Jeremiah was to invite him down to the potters house where he could see the potter making a clay vessel, which as it turned out, was spoiled. The potter worked and reworked the clay into another vessel – one that seemed good to the potter.

God is the potter. We are the vessel. The vessel of God. He desires to rework us in such a way that the Word can become flesh within us. He desires to mold us in such a way that in giving up our attachments to all worldly relationships, ideas, and possessions, thus becoming a disciple of Christ, we find the exquisite beauty within our souls, known as the kingdom of God.

The path to letting go of these attachments is prayer. Abba Moses, St. Seraphim, Blessed Columba, and virtually every other monk you could ever meet, will tell you that prayer is the only way to travel this path. Prayer styles and approaches vary from time to time, community to community. But prayer is meant to transform us into the disciples that Christ calls us to be. Our discipleship does not require that we hate our family. Our discipleship does require that we would be willing to give up our life for all of God's family. That could mean literal martyrdom, or it might mean what use to be called a white martyrdom – a dying to self so that Christ could live within us.

In the wisdom of the Gospel, the Good News is that to be Christ's disciple, isn't hate, it's love; and it isn't therapy, it's healing; and it isn't death, it is life. To die for Christ, either figuratively or literally, is for Christ to live in you.

I have struggled, and wrestled and fought with this text for a long time now. And I will continue to struggle, and wrestle and fight with it. This passage from Luke's Gospel is an important one, and I am not willing to sweep it under the rug. I want to struggle with it. I want to come to a deeper understanding of what it means for me to cling only to Christ Jesus, to be willing to die for him. I think this is our call as his disciples. I encourage you, no implore you, to struggle with me as we continue on our journey of love, and healing, and life, together.