Easter 4 B - Apr 26, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Will Owen, n/OHC

Easter 4 B – Sunday, April 26, 2015

Acts 4:5-12
1 John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18

God is Love is God

We live in a world filled with noise, both internal and external. Traffic, street corner preachers, and cell phone beeps and lights have become so common that we don’t even notice them. Media and advertising bombard our eyes and our psyches with pornographic images and subtle messages that we’re not good-looking enough, smart enough, rich enough. The voices of our culture and history telling us that white is right and black is criminal. We still hear those taunts from childhood bullies ringing in our ears: Hey fattie! Are you gay? Can you afford that, welfare FREAK!? And the voices, subtler still, perhaps of our parents, our exes, our old teachers telling us we’re lazy and will never amount to anything, too fat, too queer, too dumb, too too too too too much. A cacophony of insult, shame, and fear bearing down on us every moment, driving us to do more, work harder, buy more stuff.

Surrounded as we are by this relentless noise, it's no wonder we often hear God’s voice as an echo of the world’s and our own bigoted, hateful screech. God’s voice is that of a chiding parent, vengeful judge, or jealous spouse, a never-ending purgation, stripping us to the bone like carbolic acid on tender flesh, eating, picking, nagging us raw and bleeding. The truth, of course, is that life often does flay us and bring us to our knees. But while God’s voice does sometimes call to us in judgment, it does so, even then, as a lullaby or love song. It is our own voices and those of our society and the hurt people that fill it that come like a wolf in the night to drive us away from the sheepfold and into the outer darkness. But God’s voice is that of the Beloved, a siren cry calling us home from our self-imposed exile.

Like a lullaby, the voice of the Beloved coaxes us into a sleep that is really an awaking. W.H. Auden describes this process in his poem “Lullaby”:

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms til break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

As we fall asleep to the voices of the world and awaken to that of the Beloved, we find that dreaming is the real reality. All we thought we knew is turned upside down and seem ridiculous. Judgment is really love. The hatred, shame, grief, and guilt that fill our lives are not barriers to God’s loving us: they are gateways. And the barren earth of our broken hearts is the fertile ground of paradise.

This voice of the Beloved does strip us, but like a lover would, softly, tenderly, urgently unbuttoning and slipping off the second skin of our personas, softening our calloused hearts with sweet, whispering sighs, coaxing us back to life until we stand naked and unashamed, like Eve and Adam first waking, filled with the breath of God. The voice of the Beloved caresses our skin like a lover’s breath, warm and insistent, stirring our desire and anticipation, and soothing our shyness. This is the meaning of that wonderful verse from Psalm 29: The voice of the Lord makes the oak trees writhe, and strips the forest bare. We are the oak trees; we are the forest. As this voice moves deeper and deeper onto, into, and under our skin, it takes us to the raw, throbbing aliveness at the center of our being, the bloody, beating heart that is at once our heart and Christ’s. This is the place where our desire for God and God’s desire for us meet, and from this place flows our truest life.

In this deepest place we know that the Beloved has always been with us, curled up next to us in our mother’s womb and still here now, beckoning us: Come home, come home, come home. Lay your sleeping head, my love, here on my chest. Listen to the thud of my heart, tapping out the drum beat of new life. Come home.

Easter 3 B - Apr 19, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. José Folgueira, OHC

Easter 3 B – Sunday, April 19, 2015

Acts 3:12-19
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48

Pop-In Jesus

The resurrected Jesus appears to the disciples

In several resurrection appearance stories, Jesus pops in and he pops out. People respond in a variety of ways to his appearances. The variety of responses to Jesus’ popping in throughout all four gospels is hard to miss. Some people worship him immediately. Some don’t recognize him until there is some word, or action that reminds them of their former time with him, a calling of their name, a breaking of bread, a miraculous catch of fish. Some react with a combination of joy and doubt. In Luke the disciples responses to Jesus pop in appearances  vary. Once on the Emmaus road, disciples recognize Jesus in the breaking of bread, with hindsight they say that “their hearts burned” while he talked to them on the road. Yet, a few short verses later, they seem to join the other disciples in responding to his next pop in visit with terror, as if seeing a ghost. After seeing his hands and feet, there was a joy, but still disbelief and wonder. 

Jesus pops in and people worship, tremble with fear, rejoice, wonder and doubt. And, just when they get used to the idea that he is back, he has to leave again. How is that for a pop-in / pop-out appearance?

I have mentioned that people respond to pop-in Jesus in varying ways. He responds in varying ways to them as well, meeting them where they are, with what they need. He offers peace to the fearful. He offers a challenge to the slow of heart and the persistently doubtful. He offers teaching to the uninformed or the forgetful. He offers a blessing and a purpose to those he is about to leave.

When somebody in everyday life has a startling habit of popping in unexpectedly, we are tempted to say to them, “Next time, how about giving me some warning?” When they leave suddenly, we are tempted to say “Next time, how about saying goodbye and not just disappearing?”

In the odd plot of our lives in which people come and go, pop in and pop out, it is good to have one person we can count on and introduce to everyone we know. The resurrection appearances in Luke say to us, in effect: Consider yourself warned. Jesus is coming back at a time we cannot predict. And Jesus has said goodbye only to say hello. Jesus is with us in the presence and person of the Holy Spirit. He only left so he could stay.

Luke’s story of Jesus popping in to his disciples in Jerusalem is less well known, but is equally important. It revolves around a table instead of a tomb.

A meal is familiar territory for Jesus. He is famous for feeding the crowds of five thousands, notorious for eating with tax collectors and sinners. His hospitality reveals his desire to nourish people both physically and spiritually.

At a table, he eats with a Pharisee and forgives a sinful woman and institutes the Lord’s Supper. He later hits the beach to cook a fish breakfast for his disciples. Jesus offers a welcoming table and instructs his followers in the nature of hospitality with the words, “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Jesus welcomes everyone to his table.

Meals are not just about food. They are about companionship. The resurrected Jesus is a hungry Jesus. And Jesus is not hungry because he has been in the tomb for three days, but he is hungry to share a meal and celebrate life, hungry for them to become a new community of faithful, courageous living; hungry for them to break bread together and with strangers everywhere  until strangers are strange no more. This hunk of broiled fish that they offer to Jesus is real and physical and present, it becomes a tasted and smelled symbol of the love that binds them together, the love that binds us together, a sign of how God has gathered us and how God feeds us. And in the breaking of bread together, in the eating together, their eyes are opened, and they see Jesus for who he truly is. 

This resurrection account in Luke was so powerful for the early Church that in many places they seem to have included fish in their celebration of the Eucharist, as part of the resurrection meal. Even after the practice died out, the symbol of the fish became a sign for the resurrected Christ, and altars and church windows are adorned with the fish. Even bumper stickers. 

Every week as we gather here in this place, we live out this story over and over again. We come as friends, as family, to gather around this table, to hear the scriptures and to have our minds opened to new understandings of them, just as Jesus did with the followers in this story. 

When we share the peace in a few moments, we will speak to one another just as Christ does, saying “Peace be with you.” We speak to one another in all of our fear and doubt and disbelief, and we hear that peace spoken back to us in our own doubt and fear, mixed with disbelieving joy. As you reach to shake the hand, look carefully.... the hand you grasp may bear wounds. And then we gather around the table to eat and drink, to share a meal, and in the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the wine, to have our eyes and hearts opened to the ways that the Risen One is truly present among us, showing up to walk alongside us in our journeys along all the roads we travel, even though we do not always recognize him at first.

We gather at this meal for companionship and community, to hear one another’s stories of where we have seen the Risen Christ in the unexpected places in our lives, and to remind one another to look for Christ in the face of the stranger. That is why we include young and old, stranger and friend, in the meal. We eat not because we have already figured out who Jesus is.... we eat so that in in the breaking of the bread, Jesus can be revealed to us in new ways. And then we go out fed, but we also go out with Jesus resurrection hunger, hungry for the same things that Jesus is hungry for. We go out to bring others to the banquet, to feed others both physically and spiritually, and to offer companionship and love and community. We go out to look for the Risen Christ in the face of the stranger, to know him in the breaking of the bread in all of our eating, at this table or at our own. We go out from this table to be witness to the power and reality of resurrection.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looksCompassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, not feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looksCompassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

                                                               Teresa de Avila

Easter 2 B - Apr 12, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Reinaldo Martinez-Cubero, n/OHC

Easter 2 B – Sunday, April 12, 2015

Acts 4:32-35
1John 1:1-2: 2
John 20:19-31

Thomas and Christ - by Caravaggio

Locked doors are mentioned twice in today’s gospel lesson. I set out to find some information online about these locked doors, and read somewhere how the etymology of the Greek word used for closed, or locked, or shut was closely linked to the Greek word “ekklesia”. I got together with our Brother Roy, and his Greek Bible, and Greek lexicon. The Greek word is “kleio”.  We dug and dug, but came to the conclusion that “kleio” and “ekklesia” are not really linked. And because God has a sense of humor, that evening I saw a post on facebook that read: “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”- Abraham Lincoln. But upon further research, what I did find was the metaphorical usage of the word “kleio” in the Bible: “To obstruct the entrance into the reign of God.” All of a sudden it all became clear to me. That is precisely what was happening to those disciples behind those closed doors in John’s Gospel lesson. It is from what the experience of the resurrection released them, being shut out of the reign of God. They are behind closed doors, surely suffering post-traumatic stress. Their leader has been put to death by the barbarian Roman practice of crucifixion, and buried in a hurry. They fear they may be next, so they’re hiding. And I imagine there are feelings of guilt and remorse. One of them, now gone, betrayed Jesus and turned him to the authorities. All but the youngest fled. Peter, the senior one among them followed at a distance, but when questioned, denied he had ever heard of Jesus. Nevertheless, here they are, gathered together behind closed doors so they can share worship and eat a fellowship meal in remembrance of their teacher.

We can’t know for certain the details of what happened that evening because the story doesn’t tell us, but that worship experience must have been so profound that they saw Jesus, who said: "Peace be with you." He does not condemn them, or even rebuke them. Instead he dissolves their fear. He heals their grief. This is the ascended and glorified Jesus, but he still bears the visible scars of the crucifixion. John’s resurrection story is of the crucified Jesus, who

se glorification came by giving life and love even as his own life was being ripped from him. Jesus shows them his hands, and this reminds us that God "had given all things into his hands" (3: 35). He showed them his side that had been pierced by the Roman soldier after his death, and from which had flowed both blood and water, reminiscent of birth.  This "blood and water" would now give birth to a new community.

The disciples rejoice at "seeing the Lord." In the four gospels, "seeing" is quite often another way of saying "gets it." The disciples “see”. They “get it”. It is through the wounds of Jesus that peace is won. This peace has to do with spiritual welfare, grounded in God, otherwise, it is shallow and short lived. It is an inward peace, but it is not dormant. It is a peace that makes action possible, and so, Jesus issues a command: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you." As the disciples have received, so they are to give to others. They are to spread the gift of peace to all who are trapped, as they once were, in grief and fear. “He breathed on them."  The Greek word translated as "breathed" is emphusao.  It is the same word the Septuagint uses in translating Genesis 2: 7:  "And the Lord God...breathed into (Adam's) nostrils the breath of life." Where God breathed life into Adam, Jesus now breathes life into his new community, and in this way grants them a new source of life, the Holy Spirit. This new community is to be characterized by the forgiveness of sins. If sins are not forgiven, they are "retained" within the community, thereby greatly affecting the community's life.

Thomas was not with the group when the disciples saw Jesus. When they tried to tell him what happened to them, he does not accept their witness to an experience he has not had. He will not believe until he has seen the marks of the nails and put his hand into the spear wound on Jesus’ side. Let me propose that ‘Believe’ has quite a different meaning in the gospels from the way it is usually used in religious circles today. According to the North American New Testament scholar, the late Marcus Borg, ‘to believe’ comes from the old English ‘be love’ and is more about love, trust, faithfulness and commitment, than intellectual agreement or approval to a number of propositions. Thomas is not prepared to make his commitment at second hand. He knew what had happened to Jesus on the cross and that Jesus was dead. He wanted to see (to “get it”). And note what he asks to see – the marks of the nails and spear- the wounds

For Thomas ‘belief’ involves identifying with the crucified Jesus in his suffering.

A week later the disciples are still hiding behind closed doors. Jesus appears again, and again he says, "Peace be with you." Then he addresses Thomas. Jesus does not rebuke him, but instead releases Thomas from his uncertainty, and into making a bold confession of faith: "My Lord and my God!" His confession is in effect: I see God in the presence of Jesus; I see the Word made flesh and dwelling among us. He has come to understand that when we see Jesus, we see God. Thomas is now transformed, and through his affirmation of faith, the disciples enter into a new reality- a life where they experience the deep peace of forgiveness and share that peace with others. They are now empowered to proclaim this Good News. They will be recognized by the love they have to give and by the freedom they achieve- freedom that will enable them to give their lives away in love to others. In today’s lesson from Acts, we see these transformed disciples in action.

The peace and love we give one another through Jesus is the peace and love on display on the cross. That is what Thomas sees. The one who was crucified and resurrected is the presence of God among us, and the source of all life. His call to us is to live fully in peace, love, and hope. And we, who have come to faith through the witness of those who wrote the gospels, and the other books of the New Testament, are called to bring that love, peace, and hope even to those who don’t share our particular way of commitment to God.

Most merciful God, help us to let go and let the things that need to die, die, that we may hear and respond to the message of the Resurrection, as Thomas did. Amen

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

Easter B - Apr 5, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Borden, OHC

Easter Vigil B – Sunday, April 5, 2015

Acts 10:34-43
Colossians 3:1-4

John 20:1-18

Mary Magdalene at the tomb turns to see Jesus (Rembrandt)

Alleluia - the Lord is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

How the disciples must have struggled to make any sense of this. The Lord is risen? Some two millennia have passed and we are still struggling to come to terms with it.

Jesus lives! This is an occasion of great joy, but we have to clear - Jesus lives in spite of our best efforts.

Just a few days ago we were shouting crucify. We might console ourselves that we were just actors reading a part – but that lets us off the hook too easily. There is no escaping the fact that Jesus died at human hands - hands like ours. And if we examine ourselves in the clear light of Easter morning, we will find that we still fail to recognize Jesus... still deny Jesus... still crucify Jesus. Jesus is still dies at our hands.

With not too much work I can take the Alleluia right back out of Easter... but that is not what I propose to do.

We may still be in the process of crucifying Jesus, but there is another inescapable truth – we fail... every time... its just that simple. Human hands did their best. Jesus was crucified to the very best of our ability and was good and stone cold dead - three days in the tomb. Yet the Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia. Who knew failure could be so wonderful.

Here we are on Easter Sunday - a happy bunch of failures...

But Jesus hasn’t risen just to show us we failed... It would seem that Jesus is not finished. Jesus has more to say.

In dying and rising from the dead, Jesus isn’t just demonstrating the power of God - the invincibility of God. There is a subtle but extremely important lesson. Jesus is telling us something about the persistence of God in our lives - our personal and private lives...

Lets look how Mary of Magdala finds Jesus. She has come to the tomb and found it open. This means something is wrong. She raises the alarm. Others come to her aid and investigate the scene. We have a small crowd on hand. But this isn’t when Jesus greets Mary – when there is an audience. He waits until she is once again by herself – weeping. Jesus comes to her, to each of us, in our private moments of despair. Or perhaps this is when we are vulnerable enough to be aware of Jesus’ presence.

“Don’t hold on to me” Jesus warns Mary. Is this a safety warning? And if so, who’s safety is at stake? Could Jesus be injured by Mary’s touch - or could Mary be injured by the raw power of Jesus?

Or is it something else. Is this a more profound warning. Could Jesus be warning to Mary not to hold on to what has been, to what has passed? Perhaps, in a way, Jesus is saying don’t hold on to who I have been – because I am.

This is a very powerful message for all of us who worship and seek to follow a living God. We can’t hold on too tightly to what we have known, to our experience, to our traditions – and at the same time we can’t let go. Living relationships are complicated, messy, and wonderful. I think Jesus is calling Mary to be in a living relationship, rather than to live in her memories. Jesus is calling Mary and each of us to a living relationship.

Jesus is not terribly concerned with comforting Mary. He might have said: “Why do you weep, Mary, for I am alive again and the nightmare is over. Everything will be all right.” But he doesn’t give her many comfortable words. Instead he gives her a job to do. “Go and tell the others I am ascending.”

But look at what Mary of Magdala does. She goes to the others and says “I have seen the Lord.” This is the first thing out of her mouth. This is not what Jesus has told her to say. This comes from her own heart. Jesus told her to tell them “I am ascending,” whatever that means. But Mary has seen the Lord.

Jesus dies. Jesus rises. Jesus lives and comes to us in very personal ways. And we are given this example of Mary of Magdala. Jesus comes to her in her grief, her despair, her sorrow, and asks her to do something. Jesus calls her to witness. And she does this in her own way – I have seen the Lord.

So how does Jesus find us on this joyful Easter morn?

Perhaps tired – to the point of exhaustion... We’ve been keeping vigil for a very long time... And that on top of the seemingly endless activity of Holy Week.

Perhaps sad and guilty. We’ve had time to call to mind the ways we have failed to follow Jesus and the ways that we still, to this day, continue to deny and crucify Jesus in our hearts and in our lives. We live in a world where the hungry are not fed, the sick are not cured, the defenseless are not protected...

Perhaps joyful. We know that our redeemer lives and that our sins are forgiven. That we are beloved children of God and heirs of God’s Kingdom.

It is in this mix of emotion that Jesus comes to us, asking us why we weep. Telling us not to be afraid. Warning us not to try to hold on too tightly to what we have known. To be witnesses of the love of the Jesus.

This is our baptismal covenant – we die to the old and are born again to new life in Jesus the Christ. It is, I think, not something that happens once and for all, but happens a little more each day.

Regularly we push Jesus out of our lives – maybe just for a moment, maybe for a long time. In big and little ways we crucify Jesus. Just as regularly Jesus rises and comes back to us.

This is the durable, patient persistence of God. We can do our absolute worst – and at times we do... And yet when it comes to killing Jesus we will always fail. And at times we may even be blessed to say, as Mary of Magdala says, that we have seen the Lord. Alleluia!