Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
The Rev. Elizabeth Broyles
Proper 25, Year B - Sunday, October 28, 2012
Jeremiah 31:7-9
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 10:46-52
Mercify, Jesus, Son of David, mercify !
That is a more accurate translation of Bartimaeus’ cry today, according to one Biblical commentator. We don’t have such a word in our language. Be assured, though, that mercy is a verb in this passage.
Mercify me!
Would that we could all know what we need of Jesus-- and cry out-- this nakedly.
Try it on for size.
Mercify! Mercify me!
If that doesn’t work for you, try the more familiar cry: Help me! God help me! We all have times when we cry this—but usually not in public.
Bartimaeus knew what he needed—knew what he longed for. Jesus heard him over the din of the crowd, stopped in his tracks, and asked him “What do you want me to do for you?”
It is rare, in our intercessions when we gather, to hear someone pray for what he or she needs. We pray for peace in the world, healing for people near and far, and for the planet. We give thanks, but we rarely ask anything for ourselves.
Why is that? Do we fear what people will think if we ask?
Is it because we think if we don’t ask, we can hide the depth of our need--our desperation?
Is the vulnerability to much to ask?
Or do we simply not know what we need, really?
I confess I do not know the answer, except to say I don’t pray out loud for what I need—with you—either.
It is curious.
We worship a tremendously generous God. We follow a ceaselessly compassionate Jesus, and yet we are shy about speaking out about what we need from Christ with each other.
We hear, often, “Ask and it shall be given you,” yet we are reticent in our asking.
I wonder what would happen in me, in us, in the world about us if we were willing to be as naked in our need as Bartimaeus? I wonder what would happen if we were to take a page out of his book, and cry out, unabashedly, for Jesus to mercify us?
The Anglican in me wants to say quickly that perhaps it does not need to be spoken. Maybe the cry in our hearts is enough. Surely, if that is what we are able to manage, God in her infinite mercy will respond. That is true. I know, though, that I am not going to get off the hook that easily. The question that came as I prayed over this text was “What would happen if we cried out our need?”
We would be seen. Hallelujah? Oh no? Probably a little of both. There would probably be both relief and mortification.
I suggest that seeing and being seen in our need is a way to throw off our cloaks like Bartimaeus and come face to face with Christ in each other. Seeing and being seen in our need is a way to shed the illusion that among us there are those who are helpers and those who are helped, as if there were two distinct categories of people.
Each of us has a place in us—deep in, for some; near the surface for others—we each have a place of longing to be asked “What do you want me to do for you?”
Each of us also has the capacity to be Christ to another in that vulnerability.
Not for all, but for some.
When those two meet, there is a moment of heaven on earth—as there was when Jesus walked here, as there is any time people are loving and responsive to need.
Mother Theresa spoke of this when she said:
We all long for heaven, but we have it in our power to be in heaven with Christ at this very moment. But being happy with Him now means:
Loving as he loves
Helping as he helps
Giving as he gives
Serving as he serves
Rescuing as he rescues
Being with him twenty-four hours
Touching him in his distressing disguise.
I would add: being loved, being helped, receiving, being served and yes, even being rescued.
Sometimes we meet Christ in his distressing disguise in others; sometimes in the mirror. Sometimes we don’t see at all.
With Bartimaeus we can ask, straight out, “My teacher, let me see again.”
Let me see my neighbor’s need AND my own. Let me join hands with them to be part of Christ’s healing power in the world on both sides of the equation.
Let me be healed and a healer. We are called to deeply mutual relationship.
When we are willing to have our eyes opened we see, more and more, with the eyes of Christ—the eyes of love. We see ourselves and others more clearly and
it shapes our communities, our churches, our world. As we respond, in love, we ask more and more “what would love do!?”
Love lets its eyes open to see need: the world’s and our own.
Love revels in all being able to partake of the abundance of creation.
Love creates right relationship between peoples of all stripes, fostering freedom to live—out loud!
Love gives birth to justice.
Love celebrates the best of what it is to be human.
We can be part of the renewal of this kind of seeing and loving in the world: in our families, in our communities, in our churches and in our workplaces—and beyond.
I want to take this far for us. As the elections draw near, I wonder what it would be like if our country cried out its need, instead of being insistent on its strength and power, its right-eousness.
Instead, I read in the news this week that UN observers of our electoral process have been threatened with arrest if they come to close to the polls in one of our states. My first response was shock: I had not known that the UN observers have been present at some of our elections since 2002. I am distressed, but not shocked that they aim to be here. It does not take a particular political leaning to see that our political system has huge cracks in it. We are in trouble.
I wonder what it would be like if this news was taken as a wakeup call for us—an international mirror—instead of a threat or an insult.
I wonder what it would be like if we, as a people, were to realize and admit our need. I wonder what it would take for us to cry an honest prayer for help. I hope we are getting close, but I fear we are not ready to be mirrored by those who can see us more clearly than we can sometimes see ourselves. We have not yet asked to see again. Instead, we plow along. In our names, our nation continues its warring ways. Our manner of responding to violence is often more violence. Our consumption-based economy crashes in on itself and we experience the impact of grave ills that give birth to strife and destruction here and abroad.
Is this all we are? No—not by a long shot. We bring many gifts and blessings to the world’s table. Our faults and dis-ease are decidedly not all we are, any more than Bartimaeus was only a “blind man.” But unless we take the log out of our own eye we dare not try to help anyone else with the splinter in theirs.
My hope is that soon we will see. Soon we will know how to take our place as one nation, among others, that has a great need to be part of a true global partnership. My prayer is that we will join together to foster relief of suffering throughout the world. Until then, may people of faith—all faiths—pray for peace and concord to come. May we speak the truth of our need for change in love. May we continue to be balm for this wounded and wondrous world by continually asking “what would love do?” and doing it.
Mercify us, Lord Jesus, and let us see again. AMEN.
Meeting of the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, New Brunswick, NJ
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC, Superior
Feast of St. Luke the Evangelist. October 18, 2012
Gospel: Luke 4:14-21
I was delighted to hear our Presiding Bishop say, in her opening remarks on Monday,
that this gathering would attempt to live these days under the model of a Benedictine
monastic community, balancing prayer, work, recreation and healthy living, an ideal
which I found again in the Norms or “Rule of Life” for this body adopted for the previous Triennium. It is a noble ideal and, like most ideals, it is one that is often approximated but rarely attained. Yet it sets our eyes in the right direction and call us back again and again to what we hold most dear and to how we hope to live.
Monastic rules, including the famous Rule of St. Benedict, are important documents, and like all documents—including canons and resolutions and even Sacred Scripture—they are open to both misunderstanding and reinterpretation. I was reminded of this as we heard today’s Gospel passage, the very familiar and defining story of Jesus reading Isaiah in the synagogue aloud at the start of his public ministry.
There is a similarly defining passage at the outset of Benedict’s sixth-century monastic Rule, Chapter 7 on Humility. It is a beautiful chapter that sets before us what has been traditionally called the steps of humility, underscoring both the centrality of humility in the Christian journey and explaining how it it is attained not by climbing up but by climbing down: “...we descend by exaltation and ascend by humility.”
In discussing the so-called twelve steps of humility, Benedict begins with the fear of God, the need for obedience, for honesty and self-disclosure, for the embracing of
hardships — even unjust ones — and the right use of silence and speech. But it is advice
that is couched in language that is alien or sometimes even repugnant to us. So, for
example, the seventh step of humility states that: “...a man not only admits with his
tongue but is also convinced in his heart that he is inferior to all and of less value, humbling himself and saying with the Prophet: I am truly a worm, not a man.”
One of our elder brothers, upon reading this aloud at one of our daily chapter meetings, closed the book and said: “Well, there goes seven years of psychotherapy down the drain.”
And he was right... or would be, if this passage were some sort of 12-Step program, a
series of prescriptions on how to behave, how to cast your eyes to the ground or avoid raucous laughter or content oneself with menial treatment. And it would be misguided, even dangerous.
But monastic historians and scholars have discovered the deeper truth that this is not a program or set of commandments or prescriptions. It is, rather, a description, a portrait of what happens to a person over a lifetime of following Jesus, a picture of the trajectory of growth and development that occurs in and through intentional Christian living. Each of these “steps” then is not so much a task or a burden but is rather a mark or indicator or measure of just how far we have come in the long journey of discipleship, more obvious to others, perhaps, than to ourselves.
So it is, I think, with the Isaiah passage that our Lord reads at the outset of his ministry: anointed to bring good news to the poor, sent to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, letting the oppressed go free, and proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor.
We are tempted to see this as a program or a “to do” list — and as programs or lists go, it is a great one. But it is much more than a program, even other than a program. It is rather an indicator, a mark, a measure of our discipleship. A way of noting our progress in holiness, in Christian living, in growth in grace... both individually and corporately.
These are “marks of mission,” if you will, marks of prophetic witness and above all, of conversion... the conversion of our hearts, our minds, our manners. St. Benedict
concludes this portion of his Rule on humility by teaching that the source as well as the goal of this development is the perfect love that casts out fear. The closer we come to live in that perfect love, the more we naturally exhibit the marks of humility. And the closer we come to live in that love, the more we come — personally and communally — to exhibit these marks of mission proclaimed in today’s Gospel naturally, as if that was what we were created for in the first place. Because, in fact, that is what we were created for.
Last week, the Archbishop of Canterbury addressed the Roman Catholic Synod of Bishops in Rome on the topic of the New Evangelization. Now whatever one might think of his leadership over the past ten years, I think it worth hearing him in this matter,
especially on this feast of Luke the Evangelist. The Archbishop speaks at length of
contemplation, that is of prayer, as the root of transformation in the self and in society.
It is vintage Rowan, from start to finish. He concludes his talk by reminding his Roman Catholic brother (alas, no sister)
bishops that:
“...evangelization is always an overflow of something else — the disciple’s journey to maturity in Christ, a journey not organized by the ambitious ego but the result of the prompting and drawing of the Spirit in us. In our considerations of how we are once again to make the Gospel of Christ compellingly attractive to the men and women of our age, I hope we never lose sight of what makes it compelling to ourselves, to each one of us in our diverse ministries.”
I hope this for myself and I hope this for all of us here today and for all the Church. May we never let us lose sight of what makes the Gospel attractive to us today. Of what converts us. Of what empowers us. Of what raises us up with Christ. My guess is that it is passages such as we hear in today's Gospel that give voice to the reasons we are gathered here today.
At the very end of his talk, Dr. Williams says to his Roman Catholic audience:
“I wish you joy in these discussions — not simply clarity or effectiveness in planning — but joy in the promise of the vision of Christ's face, and in the fore-shadowings of that fulfillment in the joy of the communion with each other here and now.”
It has been said that joy is the one infallible mark of holiness. And there has been joy here in these meetings these days, along with anxiety and curiosity and energy and challenge and engagement. Real joy, deep joy.
It is for this joy that the world hungers and which the world desperately needs. And it is among the Gospel's greatest gifts: joy rooted in the person and the promises of Jesus Christ and in the hope of glory through and beyond our struggles and our sufferings, our successes and failures, our institutions and our mission.
It is the pure joy of being children of God and co-heirs and fellow workers with Jesus Christ. So that we too can say:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, because he has anointed us to bring good news to the poor. He has sent us to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
This is a promise, a hope, a call rooted and grounded in love. And whether it knows it or not, the world waits for us to live that love and spread that joy day by day. And so we begin again.
Amen.
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park
Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Feat of the Dedication of the monastery church
Thursday, October 4, 2012
When Brother Robert and I were still fairly new monks, we sat at dinner one day and a guest asked, “Why are all the monasteries on this one side of the river?”
As one, Robert and I answered. He said, “Because the real estate is cheaper on this side.” I answered, “Because this is the sacred bank of the river.” For a moment, the guest was forgotten while our spirits dueled in the refectory but then we collected ourselves… and changed the subject!
My hunch is that we’re both right!
Whatever the truth may be, building this place was an adventurous undertaking. A handful of monks built the first monastery for Anglicans since the reformation. Right here. The photo in Holy Cross, Br Adam’s book, of the community in 1922 shows 16 monks. Just about the time we built the Middle House and the Church. And around this same era we embarked on domestic and foreign missions, sending men off as far as Liberia. I don’t think we’ve ever lost that sense of adventure; the willingness to dare, to make changes, to step out or withdraw as needs have arisen.
And one of the major acts of the Order was to build this Church, dedicated to St Augustine of Hippo. On St Francis Day it was dedicated and from then on for more than 90 years it has been the soul of this place. For whatever else we do, we ground it in our prayer. Throughout the days, men and women have come to this place and in its stillness, listened for the sacred. Listened in anxiety, in joy, in willingness and unwillingness.
Our own Fr Hughson wrote in An American Cloister: “The Chapel of a monastery is a power-house where one seeks and finds grace and light for every need. Not only at stated times when it is of obligation that the brethren be present, but through all the hours of the day the members of the household, guests as well as the Religious, come here to the feet of our Lord to find strength and peace in the divine companionship.”
All that is true – it’s a sacred space but it has taken many a “blow and biting sculpture to polish well these stones.” Nothing holy seems to come easy. Think of Abraham and Jacob, Rachel and Leah, Blessed Mary, Mary of Magdala. Think of Benedict and Francis, of Dorothy Day and Paul Jones. Think of James Huntington and the early brothers. All of them followed through struggle and often through heartache for love of God. Think of Jesus the Christ, the forerunner, the Messiah, broken for love’s sake to bring us to peace.
This is a holy place; God lives here. It leaks from time to time; it makes clunking noises; the paint falls off and the doors squeak but God lives here. God lives in this exquisite, squeaky, drafty place because we pray here. God takes all the leaky, misfit stones we call our selves and builds temples where peace can thrive and where the poor and broken can find shelter. The brethren who built this Church carried the love of their Lord to teenagers in the mountains of Tennessee and the mansions of Connecticut. They walked into the bush of Liberia and witnessed to love there. They came back to pray here and went again. Thousands of people have sat here – they’re still here and they’re still coming. They come here because this is none other than the house of God. And it is the house of God because they come here.
We will continue to come here. It is a holy place. Angels ascend and descend here. Disciples leave home and venture out. Broken people come for healing. Those who can’t see come for vision. We come because this is our power-house as Fr Hughson wrote. We come to this holy place to be nourished and readied for the battle against suffering. We come for the weapons of peace which are love. We come for the treasure contained here.
Cheap real estate; thin place – God is that treasure.
