Christmas 1 A - Dec 29, 2013

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC

Christmas 1 A – Sunday 29 December 2013

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7
John 1:1-18

“In the beginning was the Word” says John,
and “without him not one thing came into being.”

In sweeping poetry, the disciple whom Jesus loved tells us what we need to know to approach and know God.  If we believe in Jesus, God saves us by adopting us as God’s very children.

We cannot know God directly, but Jesus knows God.  Jesus is the fullness of God. And we can know Jesus if we choose to believe in him.  And in knowing Jesus, we know God.

*****

John’s gospel does not start with a Nativity of Jesus but instead it puts Jesus squarely at the Nativity of the known universe.  “In the beginning was the Word” says John, and “without him not one thing came into being.”

We are left in no doubt that before there was anything, there was the Word. And some of those things that were not before the Word are time, space and matter.  

Try imagining existence without time, space and matter. We have a hard time imagining existence without those realities.  And indeed, the very fact of “being” did not exist before the Word.  The state of Being itself is part of Creation.

*****

In his prologue, John powerfully introduces us to a God who is intimately involved with matter as its Creator, and yet is essentially beyond matter and any of its prerequisites, such as time and space.

And John also lets us glimpse that God is a community of relationship; the Word was not separate from God, was indeed God, and yet was also with God.

*****

This foreword to the Gospel according to John is a masterpiece of simple but powerful poetry.  And yet in its simplicity and power, this poetry conveys all the fundamentals of theology.

Before all else there is God and from the beginning, God is loving relationship. For starters, within God’s own nature, God is relationship and love.  The Creator and the Word are one, and yet, at the same time, they also are with one another, without stopping to be one.

If it feels like a mind twister it’s because our minds are of this Creation and not from beyond Creation. Our minds are a grace from God and not on a par with the nature and existence of God.

*****

And the God that John introduces us to in the prologue chooses to simplify everything, chooses to simplify our entering in relationship with him by choosing to enter into Creation on the same footing as his very Creatures.  The maker of all matter, chooses flesh, a very special matter, to reveal himself to his Creation.

“He was in the world” and “He came to what was his own” and “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”

Suddenly, adoption by God becomes possible by receiving the Word, by believing in his name, which in Hebrew literally means “God saves” (Yehoshua, Yeshua, Jesus).

Suddenly we no longer need to understand God as God beyond ourselves.  But we are invited to relate to God as amongst ourselves, as one of us, Emmanuel. We are told “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.” But God has now been made known to us as our Father and we can cry “Abba, Father” at the prompting of the Spirit of Jesus our Brother, sent by God in our very hearts now and forever.

*****

The flesh of Jesus is powerfully manifest to us here today through the sacrament of the Eucharist. This is one way in which we can today meet God that Saves in the flesh.

Another way is that the spirit of Jesus, the Word, is present through the Holy Spirit of God awakening us to his words in our existence.  The Word, the Wisdom, the Holy Spirit of God can touch us anytime, whether through the words of holy scripture, or the words of God’s creation writ large all around us.

Any human flesh, any human face, any created thing has the power to shine God’s light and life on you. Make sure to notice that more often.

And these means of relationship, the very threads of this existence; time, space, matter, being are all pure gifts by the will of God.  And it is those gifts which enable us to relationship with the Divine by the sheer grace of God.

If God were to will to put an end to time, space or matter, none of our rich relationship with God, within God would be possible anymore.  But if we are learning one thing about God, it’s that God never tires of relationship.  God keeps trying with us.  Thanks be to God.

*****

In the week to come, see if you can sidle up to these 18 verses of the prologue again. Read them aloud a couple of times and see what those words conjure up in you. It is poetry, after all; it deserves to be read aloud and heard to work its charm on our hearts. God is very near to you.

*****

Jesus, you are very near to us.  Beloved Word of God, our Lord, our Redeemer and our God, give us to believe in your Light and your Life through your grace and truth. Amen.

Christmas Eve - Dec 24,2013

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Year A - Christmas Eve - Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Isaiah 9:2-7 
Titus 2:11-14 
Luke 2:1-14(15-20) 

The monastery's St Augustine Church all decked out for Midnight mass.

I’m thinking about all the memories floating about here tonight…and I’m enough of a softy to imagine that most of them are good memories. I’m also enough of a realist to know that some of them are painful and full of aches to some of our hearts. A mixed bag, but all part of the memory and longing that fill each Christmas.

I grew up in Scotland when it was still pretty Calvinist. Christmas was not a holiday for most people…there was a war going on and that made things even more austere. My father always worked.  The Kirk didn’t have services unless Christmas was on a Sunday… popish, you see. We celebrated at home with a good dinner and a clootie dumpling (look it up!) but what we were really looking forward to was New Year – Hogmanay.

I remember well the bleakness of the war years and the lightening up of peacetime. We immigrated to this country on December 21st and I thought America was all light…Christmas trees everywhere, presents wrapped in shiny paper with ribbons (not brown paper packages tied up with strings). Tinsel and bells… and parties with plenty of food.  You people knew how to party.

It took a little while to see beneath the glitter to the ordinary human sorrows. It took some time for me to acknowledge the fear of knowing that underneath I was more different that even my accent showed.  I went to an all white school – class of ’54 and laughed at the boys who wore green on Thursdays with a lump in my throat that somebody would find out.  One of the misfits, one of the lonely ones.

But each year God intruded and  comforted again when the magic, loving time of Christmas came…and I could go alone to Church at midnight and step into the mystery of a love that broke through any darkness the year could have brought, finding comfort in a mothering, fathering God.

So many memories… I’m sure you’re remembering right now, too.  Here in this holy space which is so full of prayer…

But one memory in particular stands out for me. Our first Christmas pageant in South Africa.  Most of the local children had been unchurched when we got there and our Young Adult Service Corps volunteer took it upon herself to organize a pageant.  She worked very hard with those kids.  They had it down pat.  We invited people from the town and the cathedral to see this triumph.  The church was full.

It started off fine -  the narrator set the stage and then Gabriel appeared. She was six feet tall in a bed sheet with a tinsel halo.  Mary was perfect, quiet in blue.  Joseph didn’t know exactly what was going on but then, he never really did anyway!  Gabriel made her announcement -  Mary froze; Gabriel announced again – Mary stayed frozen. And again – frozen.  Finally, Gabriel lost it, swore at Mary, ripped off her halo and threw it at the Virgin. Joseph, God bless him, still didn’t know what was going on.  The shepherds decided to rescue the performance with a dance that made Miley Cyrus look staid.  The director started bawling and the congregation went into hysterical laughter.  Even the mothers were in stitches.

I loved it!  I treasure the memory.  Afterwards, we all had a cup of tea and recovered our composure.

Since then there have been beautiful Christmases.  Since then, we’ve built more memories sharing them together here.  But I go back often to that vivid memory of a bunch of young people who got so lost in and bewildered by a strange story; to the young volunteer who so wanted to do it perfectly and didn’t realize that she had. To the congregation of blacks and whites in rural South Africa who had a raucous good time together all unselfconsciously.

It was perfect because that’s how Jesus always comes.  Not into the sweetness but into the mess of life.  Mary’s there, timid and fearful.  Giving birth away from home and comfort; Joseph holds his little wife clumsily because what does he know?  And like the shepherds of Mariya uMama weThemba we don’t know what to do either and if we have sense we dance and rejoice.  It’s a bittersweet story… of poignancy and tragedy… of refugees trying to get their documents.  People with unknown futures and pasts we often can’t talk about.

We get lost somewhere in the middle of the story…lost with our memories, our sadness, our longing and our loneliness.  And Gabriel pitches her halo at us and says “Glory, Glory – pay attention, people, Glory!”

The world is still a mess.  Children are born under bridges.  Mothers aren’t all lucky enough to have a kindly Joseph.  Fat cats still dominate, wars still destroy the innocent, gun are given as presents.  But the memory of goodness and possibilities and love inexplicable survives and blooms and the promise of this night is that the light will come and a baby’s cry will  break through.  And that cry is the cry of God with us …now , tonight, in this place, in our midst, in our selves.

Advent 4 A - Dec 22, 2013

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
Year A - Advent 4 - Sunday, December 22, 2013

Isaiah 7:10-16
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25

Humanity and Divinity: Joseph and Jesus

  The pressure is growing as we enter the final stretch on this Fourth Sunday of Advent. Both American culture and media have reached a fevered pitch in loading Christmas with false expectations of family harmony and good cheer. Hallmark defines the perfect Christmas, and people spend much time and energy trying to achieve this perfect experience. Among the niceties of the season, we forget just what a scandal the incarnation and birth of Jesus really is. Behind the pretty Hallmark scenes lies wonder alongside of scandal. Today’s Gospel reminds us that God’s work often upsets comfortable social expectations and conventions.

Every third year we hear Matthew tell the story. He writes that Joseph was a “righteous man”. Whatever he believed about Mary, his betrothed, he was not willing to shame her, either by putting her on public trial or trashing her reputation to clear his own. So he resolved to divorce her quietly, without casting blame, choosing the most humane of the customary legal options of his day. He was on the verge of doing so when an angel of the Lord spoke to him---and nothing was ever the same again. Joseph’s sense of right and wrong got lost in the divine shuffle. His righteousness gave way to God’s. He trusted what an angel told him in a dream, and took Mary home as his wife.

Christian tradition has never known quite what to do with Joseph. He disappears from the gospels before Jesus’ baptism and is never heard from again. One legend has it that he was already an old man, a widower with children, when he married Mary. Art, largely commissioned by the Church, supported this image. Paintings portray him as a kindly old man, beyond sexual thought or action, watching the world admire Mary and her child. This neutered version of Joseph certainly tells us more about the Church’s, rather than God’s attitude toward sex. But that’s a different story.

Joseph is usually an extra without lines in the drama starring Mary and the child.  But in Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph is the main character. Gabriel speaks to him, not Mary, as he lies sleeping. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” This greeting is important. If the Messiah is to be born the Son of David, then this is the man he must be born to. The prophets said so, and Matthew, writing for a Jewish audience, goes to great lengths throughout his Gospel to persuade us that what the prophets foretold has come to pass in Jesus. So for Matthew it is the annunciation to Joseph, not Mary, which is central. The whole experiment hangs on what happens with Joseph. If Joseph believes the angel, Mary will have a home and her child will be born the Son of David. But if he does not believe, then Mary is an outcast---either disowned or killed by her family for disgracing them and herself by her pregnancy.  

In Jewish law, paternity is not a biological issue but a legal one. Jewish law reads: “If someone says, “This is my son”, he is so attested.” Joseph becomes the child’s father the moment he says so. Joseph’s trust is as critical as Mary’s womb. It will take the two of them to give birth to this remarkable child: Mary to give him life, and Joseph to give him a name. This may all sound very quaint to our modern ears, but the heart of this story is much bigger and more profound---whether from Joseph’s perspective or from Mary’s.

It is about a person who wakes up one day to find their life wrecked: trust betrayed, name ruined, future revoked. It is about a person who surveys a mess not of their own making, and decides to trust that God is present in it. With every reason to disown it all, neither Joseph nor Mary do, they don’t walk away from it in search of a cleaner, more controlled and conventional life. They claim the mess, the scandal and the wonder. Mary gives it her body. Joseph gives it his name. They own the mess---they legitimize it---and the mess becomes the place where the Messiah is born.

Child and Caregiver; Jesus and Joseph

Today Joseph is held up in the story as the one who is most like us, presented day by day with circumstances beyond our control, with lives we would may never have envisioned for ourselves, tempted to divorce ourselves from it all, when an angel whispers to us: “Do not be afraid, God is here. It may not be what you expected or planned, but God may be born here too, if you will permit it.”

That “if” is crucial. God’s “yes” depends on our own. God’s birth requires human partners, a Mary, a Joseph, a you, a me---willing to trust the impossible, willing to claim the scandal and wonder, to adopt it and give it our names. Amidst our less than perfect lives, God is about doing something new and wonderful. And not just in each one of us alone, but the whole Church, surveying a world that seems to have descended into chaos, and proclaiming over and over again to anyone who will listen that God is still with us, that God is still being born in and through the chaos and mess, and among those who will still believe what angels tell them in their dreams.  +Amen.

Advent 1 A - Dec 1, 2013

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. James Michael Dowd, OHC
Year A - Advent 1 - Sunday, December 1, 2013

Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44


Swords into Food

A modern plough at work in the field
Kuhn plough at Werktuigendagen 2007

St. Benedict, in his Rule for monks, is famous for telling us that the life of a monk should be a perpetual Lent. I would like to hold out to you the possibility that if Advent had been a fully developed liturgical season at the time that Benedict wrote his Rule, he might have taught us that the life of a monk should be a perpetual Advent.

And here's why: Advent is that season in which we are called to slow down and quiet ourselves in order to awaken ourselves to a new way of life, a new and renewed hope in the God of hope, the God with us. This is, I think, what monastics and those who are inspired by monastic spirituality do. They wait, they watch, they hope. Most of all, they hope.

All of this waiting, watching and hoping is actually quite counter-cultural which, again, a way of being that is, I believe, the mark of a healthy monastic community. Quiet down in December? Yes. Wait, when I've got a million things to do before the holidays? Yes. Believe that in the days to come there will be peace on earth? Yes. Salvation is nearer now more than ever? Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Believing those things is counter-cultural and to be a Christian, in our country at this current moment in history, demands of us, that we be counter-cultural. So here, at the beginning of this blessed season, let us make a commitment to living the life of a perpetual Advent. As St. Paul calls to us from so many years ago, this Advent, let us wake from our sleep; and as Jesus calls to us once awake, we must keep awake. I believe these calls are invitations to waken ourselves to the hope that Isaiah promises in the days to come. And that's what I'd like to talk to you about this morning - that prophesy/hope that Isaiah made in our first reading, one of the most famous of the season of Advent.

In particular, I'd like us to focus on what is perhaps the most well-known verse in the prophesy, verse 4, part of which reads:

...they shall beat their swords into plowshares,and their spears into pruning hooks;nation shall not lift up sword against nation,neither shall they learn war any more.

When I have asked people what they think about this particular verse, I have usually gotten one of three responses. One response is a kind of “that would be nice, but not going to happen in our life times”; another is “yes, but what about the Muslims? Or the Soviets? Or whomever the perceived enemy was at the moment. But the most common response I have heard over the years, and the most dangerous and least hope-filled is the cynical response. The one in which the person says: “Isaiah is a pipe-dream, a naïve and silly approach to world affairs.” This kind of cynicism leads to some realities on the ground that make for an especially un-Advent like approach to our lives.

Because that kind of cynicism is exactly the kind of cynicism that the hope of Isaiah, the hope of Advent, the hope of Christ, should make us reject out of hand. That cynicism is about darkness. And Advent is nothing, if not about light. The light of hope, the light of Christ having come among us, the light of Christ coming again, the light of Christ being right here, right now.

And each week, as we light one more candle on the Advent wreath, slowly, but surely, building the light – it is my prayer, my hope, my expectation, that we will learn what it means to beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. That is what it means, I think, to wake up and to stay awake. It is to learn how to accept the invitation from Christ, to be a partner in the building of Christ's light, Christ's reign.

And so what does Isaiah's poetic language mean in real life? Well, to understand that, I think we must start with with text. Isaiah was calling to the people to beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks not for poetry's sake, but for the sake of food. Plain and simple.
The constant preparation for war was extremely expensive as it is today. Swords and spears were among the most expensive weapons of war at the time and the money that was raised in order to make these weapons came directly from the people and out of their food budgets. The people were starving to death so that enough weapons of war could be made to defend them from being killed by the enemy. This kind of thinking is what passes for being “realistic” and as a “sophisticated” understanding of world politics. It is nonsense.

Isaiah knew that a sword could be reconfigured into a plowshare by a blacksmith. This is actually something that could be done by any ordinary blacksmith. A plowshare is that part of a plow that is sharpened and actually digs the soil in order to create a space where seeds can be sown. Spears could easily be changed by a blacksmith into pruning hooks, which could then be used to prune fruit and nut trees which would provide healthier trees, which would provide more food. Isaiah knew that a hungry people are a desperate people. Feed people, grow peace.
So a less poetic, but perhaps more direct way to relay Isaiah's real meaning might be: “they shall beat their swords and spears into food.” Food that nourishes, food that gives life, food that allows us to continue to build the light. Food for peace. And remember, this wasn't one-sided. Isaiah says that the nations, plural, will be part of this movement.

One other note about the text. The phrase at the beginning of our reading “in the days to come” is not referring to some magical, mystical, time in the future when the Messiah brings all this great stuff about.  Rather “in the days to come” refers to real time, something that will happen in the course of human history, brought about by the peoples of the earth who seek God.

And that got me thinking. And so, to continue my own awakening, I did a little research in the preparation of this sermon. I looked into hunger in our world today. I'd like to do a little visual experiment with you today {count off in sixes, the sixth person raises their hand and keep it in the air}.
Now, please look all around the church. Every person who has their hand in the air represents a hungry person in the United States. One in six persons in the United States, the United States...is hungry.1 They do not have enough food to feed themselves or their families. These people are not only in the poorest neighborhoods in some forgotten inner city, though they are there. They are also in nice neighborhoods in glamorous cities, they are in suburbs, they are in rural areas, they are, perhaps, right in this church. They are us – and we are hungry. They are us, but we are at war. Just last year, in 2012, that meant that 49,000,000 people in the United States, 49,000,000 of our fellow citizens were hungry.

In Afghanistan, the World Food Program says the number of hungry is approximately 7,400,000 people who are classified as starving, and another 8,500,000 people who are classified as facing borderline starvation.3 This is out of a population of 31,000,000 people.
Around the world, in the latest figures we have which date back to 2010, the number of hungry is 870,000,000 people I know these are a lot of numbers, and I'm not really a numbers guy, but I must wake up. We must wake up. Jesus makes it very clear – wake up.

Please be patient with me, just one more set of numbers: Since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, the United States has spent, as of 5:02 this morning, 677,723,625,603 dollars.5 The website for National Priorities keeps a running ticker as to how many dollars we are spending on this war. It moves so fast, that it is difficult to capture any particular dollar amount, but there it is, as of 5:02 AM – over 677 Billion dollars.
In those same twelve years, we have spent a little more than 24 Billion dollars on food aid for the entire planet. So, 677 Billion dollars for war in Afghanistan alone, and 24 Billion dollars for food all over the world. That is a lot of swords and spears, and not much food.

Now what would it look like if we took a percentage of that money – let's say even just 10% of it – over 67 Billion dollars – and spent some of it on emergency food relief and most of it on teaching people how to grow their own food, how to deal with particular realities like droughts and floods over the long term, and how to build infrastructures to make local agricultural efforts more effective. What would that look like? It would look like we were building the light of the Advent wreath. What if we used 50% - 339 Billion dollars? The light would be shining so brightly we need sunglasses. Peace would be breaking out all over the dinner tables of the world.

Yes, Isaiah, and Paul, and Jesus are all about hope. And so am I – at least on my best days. So here's my hope for myself, my community, and all of you. My hope is that:

In the days to comethe treasury of our countrywill be used to feed our own people;to beat our drones into food for Afghanistan,and our nuclear submarines into food for North Korea.In the days to come,the relative wealth of our monasterywill be used to feed the peopleto turn our treasure into food for Newburgh, Highland, West Park;and to continue to turn our bread into Eucharist for the spiritually hungry.

If you came to the monastery, whether as a guest or as a monk to escape the world, you came to the wrong place. The monastery and monastic spirituality is not an escape from the world, it is a gateway to the world. These beautiful sisters and brothers that God has given to us – sisters and brothers in this church, back home, in Afghanistan, in North Korea, El Salvador and all around the world, are sisters and brothers to be fed and to feed us. They are not to be targets of our swords or spears, our drones or nuclear weapons.
So, in these Advent days to come, I invite you to hope and hope and hope. To watch and to wait by learning what it might mean for you to feed a hungry person, for your community to feed a hungry community, for our nation to feed another nation. In learning those things, we might just not have time to learn war anymore.  Spend these next several weeks being quiet enough to learn what it means to build the light in these days that have come.

AMEN.