Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Christmas Day - Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Holy Cross MonasteryWest Park, NY
Br. Aidan Owen, OHC
Christmas Day - Tuesday, December 25, 2018

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

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.


In the name of the one God, who is Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing. Amen.

Three years ago, on Christmas Eve, my grandmother died. I remember so clearly the upward tilt of her face as if she were lying in anticipation. Her mouth gaped open, and her breath was ragged. Her entire being in that moment was need, wanting, and expectation. I held her soft hand in mine. I matched my breathing to hers, and I tried to make my whole being a kind of waiting, like hers was in that moment. I yearned and labored, with her, as much as I could, for the release that was not only death—though it was certainly that—but that was also birth. In those last moments of her life, she was both the Holy Mother whose name she shared, groaning in labor pains; and also the promised child, coming into the world.

That moment of waiting, yearning, and laboring with my grandmother is forever fused for me with the coming of the Messiah at Christmas. And that moment, poignant and sad and even joyful in its way, adds color, depth, and meaning to this most holy festival. Because this is the truth our faith and my life have taught me: that in the midst of life we are in death, and that in the midst of death, we are in life.

In the midst of the deepest darkness, when hope seems furthest, and the night as long as it could be, when despair beckons and sorrow threatens, that is the moment God comes to us, comes to us as a little human child, powerless, defenseless, threatened, and exiled. And also lovely, trusting, and tender, and beautiful. Comes to us, in weakness and love and vulnerability to save and deliver us from the world we have created.

Leonard Cohen writes,
“I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere.”
I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere.

Why should our salvation look like a refugee baby, born far from home, defenseless and crowded in among the animals, surrounded, not by beautiful greenery and poinsettias, like our lovely crèche, but by the stink and mess of a stable?

God comes to us in this guise of vulnerability and need to show us how to be free. To show us that to be filled with the whole presence of God, as Jesus was, is to be perfectly, fully human, which is also to say perfectly, fully in need of tenderness, care, and love and perfectly, fully built for trust and mutuality and union. Like a little child.

Thomas Merton writes of the true self that
“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives […]. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. […] It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. […] I have no program for this seeing.  It is only given.  But the gate of heaven is everywhere.” {1}
It is this nothingness, this absolute poverty that the Christ child models for us at Christmas. God, it would seem, is not particularly interested in great acts of power, in the destruction of empires and the humiliation of those people with whom we disagree. Nor, it would seem, is God interested in our becoming those invulnerable, perfectly put together people we think we would be if only we got rid of our pain, our shame, and those parts of us we find least acceptable.

Perhaps what we see as darkness, is really, in God’s sight, the other side of light. Perhaps sorrow and joy are most truly themselves when joined together. As if the pairing of these seeming opposites reveals their deeper unity, reveals that love must be shattered to be known everywhere, reveals that our poverty is God’s glory, reveals that God must be human for humanity to be freed from its enslavement to power and greed.

For, if we could become again like that little child Jesus, crying for his mother’s milk, if we could become all need once more, like my grandmother on her deathbed, stripped of all politeness, then we could cry out to God for the mercy that is ever flowing around us, that embraces and sustains us in every moment of every day. Then our poverty and our indigence would no longer seem to us shameful or ugly, but rather the very source of our total dependence on God. And in the revelation of our true faces in the pure light of our poverty, God’s mercy would shine in and through us like a blazing sun to light and warm this hurting world.

God greets us, moment by moment, from the other side of sorrow and despair with a love so vast and shattered it can reach us everywhere. We have only to cry out in our need, to grab hold of the Divine Mother and nurse and be fed. And to revel in the love and glory of a God who would becomes human to show us how to be free.

Amen.

 {1} Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Advent 4 C - Sunday, December 23, 2018

Holy Cross MonasteryWest Park, NY
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Advent 4 C - Sunday, December 16, 2018

Micah 5:2-5a
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.


Our lesson today recounts the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth. It makes both of them prophetesses of the great things God will bring about. Those great things will come in the life, death and resurrection of a little boy who is growing in the womb of Mary.

Mary’s prophecy comes in the shape of the Magnificat. This new testament canticle features prominently in every office of Vespers we sing here a the monastery. This song of Mary is a constant reminder of the work of God in the world, and therefore our mission in the world.

The Magnificat is of course a song of praise to the glory of God. But it is also a revolutionary song and a socioeconomic manifesto. By its sheer repetition in our monastic life, we can come to neglect those aspects of the Magnificat. A conscious re-appraisal of this gem is in order.

*****

But first, let’s look at the circumstances of the Magnificat. The Song of Mary is uttered by an out-of-wedlock pregnant teenager. For this prophecy of what God is about, God chose a poor servant girl from a provincial backwater of the empire, with dark skin and dark brown eyes and dark hair to be the mother of Jesus.

And she sings her song of praise in answer to an older cousin’s greeting. A cousin who was hitherto considered barren and whose husband priest is dumbstruck into a temporary silence of the patriarchy. 

Mary and Elizabeth are two marginal people in their society. And yet it is they who are announcing the world-changing coming of God’s justice, to be born in a brown-skinned little baby. 

In God’s choice of her prophetesses, God has already marked a preferential option for the poor; poor in power, poor in resources, poor in status.
*****

Mary starts by glorifying God. She expresses her awe for God’s being and her joy at God’s doings. Her whole being is engaged in this rejoicing. "My soul magnifies the Lord, an my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior!" We can’t help but be uplifted by her devotion and join her in singing that God is awesome!

Next, Mary expresses her amazement at God choosing a lowly servant for God’s mission. God didn’t choose a queen; God didn’t choose a millionaire; God didn’t chose a celebrated bride with status. She chose a poor servant girl from the backwaters.

Mary acknowledges her exaltation.  God has chosen her to be the mother the Savior. All generations will count her blessed.

Then Mary spends most of her song describing the way God is in general. This general character of God accounts for why she has treated her the way she has in her lowliness and thus leads her to rejoice and magnify the Mighty One.

And this character portrait of God paints a great reversal of fortune.

*****

Mary sings what God is really like. God is not the least impressed by any of our pride, power, or opulence. She has mercy on those who are in awe of God. God favors those who humble themselves. She cares for those who turn from the ego boosting accumulation of wealth to the lowliness of self-denial for the sake of others.


Listen to the five important verbs in this part of the Magnificat. Mary tells us that God regards or respects the poor, exalts the poor, feeds the poor, helps the poor, remembers the poor. 

Those verbs are in the past tense in the Magnificat but they need to be in the future tense in our lives. God has done a lot of this already. But as the hands and feet of God in the world, we need to continue the mission. We need to undertake being lovers of the poor for God’s sake.


*****

The Song of Mary is a revolutionary bombshell because it turns the values of this world upside down. The poor are important, not so much the rich and mighty. Mary is announcing what her Son will be about.

Do you remember what Jesus said in his first sermon in the gospel of Luke? A first sermon reveals what is important to a person. In his first sermon in Luke, Jesus chose to read from Isaiah and said, 
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me 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.’
And Jesus added:
‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

You see, prisons have always been filled with poor people, and that is true today. Do a sociological study of our prisons and you will find our prisons filled with poor people. In his first sermon, Jesus is passionately concerned about poor people, and poor people are often found in prison or fighting wars for the rich.

Do you remember the beatitudes in Luke? Do you remember the first beatitude in Luke, his first blessing?  Jesus said,
‘Blessed are you who are poor,
   for yours is the kingdom of God.’
The poor get the kingdom of God. They understand their utter need of God. And they receive the kingdom.

We know that rich people don’t need God very much, because rich people are usually busy living life to the fullest and don’t have time for God.

*****

But Luke’s motif of God’s reversal of fortunes is not intended to raise violent resistance or to drive the wealthy and powerful to despair.

Hopefully, the well-off feel exhorted to deal with their wealth in a way that brings them into a positive relation with the poor in order to partake in the same promised salvation.

God’s revolution is not a violent one but it announces an entirely different way of being stewards of the Earth. What would the laws governing our economy look like if they were written with the Magnificat in mind?
How can we support those kinds of socioeconomic transformation in our lives? Do we vote for people who stand for that kind of society? Do we spend our resources (time, money and prayer) in a way that supports the poor?

The Magnificat announces a revolutionary Jesus. Come Lord Jesus, come!

Amen.

Sunday, December 16, 2018

Advent 3 C - Sunday, December 16, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josép Reinaldo Martínez-Cubero, OHC
Advent 3 C - Sunday, December 16, 2018

Zephaniah 3:14-20
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.


Today is the Third Sunday of Advent, traditionally called Gaudete Sunday or Rejoice Sunday. The name is taken from today’s second lesson from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” The reading from the prophet Zephaniah also calls for shouts of joy: “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!” And in the lectionary, for today, there is also a canticle (not included in this liturgy) with the words of the prophet Isaiah calling people to sing praises and ring out their joy, for the great one in the midst of them is the Holy One of Israel.

But, ah, today we also have our gospel lesson with John the Grouch Baptist. "You brood of vipers!" he shouts. "Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruits worthy of repentance." According to the Gospel of Luke, great crowds streamed into the desert to get yelled at by John. Why? Well, a clue in the gospel passage is the question they ask at the conclusion of John’s sermon.  "What should we do?" That's not a question people ask when things are going well. It's the question we might ask when we've come to the end of our rope, or when what we have thought to be wisdom has failed. It's what we ask when we are desperate. "What should we do?" 

What did the crowds think such a character as John, ascetic, rough, dressed in camel’s hair, an appearance that bespeaks the margins, would say in answer to their question? Abandon your homes and families? Dwell in the desert? Start a revolution? Oh, no. The answer he gave is much more radical than that. To the tax collectors, he said, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." To the soldiers: "Don't extort money by threats or false accusations; be satisfied with your wages." In other words, he tells them to go home. He points them to the very places in which they already live, and work, and suggests that these places are precisely where God calls them to be, and where God is at work in them, and through them. 

So the message for us is to stop escaping, and insisting God is somewhere else. God is present. God is here, amid our imperfections and failings, blessing our efforts to reflect God’s love, and claiming us as God’s own, even when we fall short. John calls us to inhabit the stuff of our lives as deeply and as generously as we can. Our Messiah is closer than we think. We are to inhabit our lives, no matter how plain or obscure or unglamorous or difficult.  And why?  Well, because the holy ground that matters most is the ground beneath our feet.

Holiness is not the ethereal and mysterious thing we tend to make it. If we're willing to look closely, if we're willing to believe that nothing in our lives is too mundane or secular for God, then we'll understand that all the possibilities for salvation we need are embedded in the lives God has already given us. We don't have to look "out there." The reign of God is here, within and among us. God meets us where we are, accepts us as we are, and makes good use of us to care for (NOT take care of) those around us. John, in this gospel lesson, challenges us to right relationship not only with God, but also with our neighbors because, really, that is the only way to be in right relationship with God. So bearing fruits worthy of repentance has to do with how we are living out God’s love with each other.

John concludes his sermon in the wilderness with a harrowing description of the coming Messiah: "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." The Gospel writer calls John's exhortation "good news." My first reaction to that was: “Say what??” How is the portrait of a Messiah who judges, sorts, and burns us good news? After much pondering, I decided to look up the word “judgment” in the dictionary. I was shocked, and enlightened. Synonyms for “judgment” include discernment, acuity, and perception. We can think of judging something as seeing it clearly, or knowing it as it truly is. 

Perhaps John is saying that the Messiah who is coming really sees us, and knows us at our very core. Perhaps the winnowing fork is an instrument of love, wielded by the One who discerns in us rich harvests still hidden by chaff.  It is by surrendering to God every part of our lives that we consent to God to separate all that is destructive from all that is good, beautiful, and priceless in us. Perhaps this Messiah who is coming to save us is actually coming from within us. All we have to do is take responsibility for our actions and our lives.

To conclude, I’ll share an interesting thing I learned recently. John the Baptist is the patron saint of spiritual joy. That’s right, John the Grouch Baptist. It makes sense. He was still in his mother’s womb when he first leapt at the presence of Mary and Jesus. When it came time for him to “decrease” and for Jesus to “increase,” he did so willingly, saying, “…my joy has been fulfilled.” Clearly, John understood something unyielding about joy. Joy is not just happiness, but as my Spiritual Director reminded me recently, joy needs sadness, and heartbreak to be complete. Joy will cost us. We are to bear fruits worthy of repentance, yes, bear fruits, as in bring them forth, but also, bear them, as in carry them, shoulder them, endure them. Gaudete! ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+     




Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Advent 2 C - Sunday, December 9, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. John Forbis, OHC
Advent 2 C - Sunday, December 9, 2018

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.


Luke more than the other Gospel writers seems to place curious emphasis on who the political and religious leaders are during certain events that take place in his Gospel.  You will hear him do this again not too far from now on Christmas Eve when he also names who the rulers are at the time of Jesus’ birth.  One possible reason for this is Luke’s desire to make sure that what he deems important is placed in a concrete historical time and place, as if you could place a point on the timeline when the good news takes place as if to say that this is real folks, it has really happened!  

But Luke also lists no less than seven names and their positions.  These are people who perhaps warranted the attention, who were feared even and many followed their every word.  And in history, what we also know about them from other passages in the Gospel and from other histories is that they were authoritarian, corrupt and oppressive.  They had the privilege and therefore, they called the shots.  They were the closest thing to being a god or even to being God himself.  Especially, in the case of the religious leaders, Annas and Caiaphas, (for let’s name them as Luke does), in their own minds, they were at least the voice of God.  

However, God seems to have passed them all by and came to the wilderness.  The Word did not come to those we all would have expected.  They were mentioned only to provide a glaring contrast to the true recipient of the Word, a very strange man baptizing and making ominous proclamations in the barren land of the River Jordan.  One rather visceral description of John the Baptist from the New Hampshire, Congregational Church minister, Nancy Rockwell, may help us get a picture for our imagination of who he might be:  

“Wildman John leaps into Advent’s second Sunday, taking my breath away with his matted black dreadlocks, that camel skin he wraps around his bony body, gnarled bare feet sticking out below.  His eyes seize me the way his rough hands seize the locusts he eats, the honey he snatches from wild bees.  He roars warnings: dire times, dereliction of duty, the brink of doom.  Advent seems too small a stage to hold him.”

God chooses to place his Word firmly in the hands of this fanatic.  And thousands flocked to him.  The people have not heard anything like this before as he preached his message of baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  If we were to read on in the Gospel, we would hear how John is calling the crowds who come out to him a brood of vipers who have nowhere to run with the wrath that is to come.  Not even their descent from Abraham can save them.

As the quoted passage from Isaiah tells us, mountains will be leveled, valleys will be filled in, rough places made smooth like a plain and paths will be straightened.  Dramatic even violent shifts are going to take place, and all of this seems to be equated with John and his message.   

We could certainly look at John as a figure of doom or we could see John as a prophet of hope for us.  The passage from Baruch has a very similar image to Isaiah’s only it is not God’s coming to us but God’s leading us to himself.  Yes, the high mountains and hills will be made low, the valleys will be filled up and there will be level ground but it is so that the children of Israel in exile can come safely home, so that the community can be whole and be at home in God.  Nothing will get in the way of God’s calling his children home and he will enable this journey to take place easily and joyfully.  

The language of Advent is seen as a language of doom and gloom only when we try to see ourselves as gods or even God, consumed by trying to control the world around us, by privilege, by power and even more by entitlement.  God does not stand for this.  God does not tolerate the oppression, the constant debt that we supposedly owe each other and even ourselves.  Whether it is external or internal it is still oppression.  

What God offers is the gift of forgiveness.  No debts are to be paid.  It is only the freedom of repentance and forgiveness, to turn to God and receive unconditionally.  God wants to offer this so much, he will level mountains and hills, fill in valleys, make rough places smooth and straighten paths to ensure this happens.  And to prove it even further, he will shove kings, princes and even high priests aside to bring the message to a wild man out in the wilderness so that there is no mistake of the meaning.  Only a wild man, an outlander, can speak it in truth.    

What is coming is unheard of, perhaps to many even unlikely.  And to a certain extent it is terrifying because nothing or no one can stop it.  This is one thing we cannot control.

Even death is not enough to stop it.  Death has no power against the love of Christ, the Messiah who will transform the world, who will give his life away to show us exactly just how potent love really is.  Yes, we have much to celebrate this Advent season.  We have a good reason to repent, to turn to God, to anticipate with eagerness the gift that is to come and to come home.  What is approaching is inevitable, universal and freely offered.  

What the Philippians are learning from Paul only reaffirms the celebration of losing this control.  We have an opportunity to live and I do mean “live” a life that expresses the abundance and generosity of this gift.  We can be partakers of grace in Christ.  We can love with all the fullness and wisdom of Christ, bringing each other home to the “beauty of the glory of God”.  We can be prophets for each other proclaiming this good news.  This message is given to us as much as it is given to John.  We may feel like we are nothing more than voices crying out in the wilderness, but it is here where the Word of God comes and the preparation begins.  Not to the great political and religious structures and ideologies of the world.  It comes to us when we are at our most vulnerable, when many might deem us crazy and outsiders, a powerful force that could seem quite threatening to some, a parade towards salvation as Eugene Peterson would put it.  

We can make our way living in the grace of God’s love and God levels the landscape to come to us.  At the meeting point is the coming of the Christ child into the world, and we can never go back.  Amen.

Sunday, December 2, 2018

Advent 1 C - Sunday, December 2, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
Advent 1 C - Sunday, December 2, 2018

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.


First, let me wish you a Happy New Year... since the beginning of Advent is just that – the beginning of a new liturgical year. At the end of December there will come a time that also calls itself New Year's... but it's an imposter.

Advent is the beginning of something, but it can feel like little more the prelude to Christmas. Everything in Advent seems to point to Christmas – whether it is candles on a wreath or chocolates behind little doors in a calendar... Advent is only important because what comes next is extremely important... And that is just not true, even though it is not false.

I’ve been reading a new book by Murray Stein. He may not be a household name, but he is perhaps the greatest teacher and interpreter of Carl Jung alive today. And not just Jung the Psychotherapist, but Jung the Theologian. In this new book Stein begins a section with a quote: “Look afar and see the end in the beginning.” Be sure to note that is IN the beginning, not FROM the beginning.

Where does this pearl of wisdom come from? Not scripture. Perhaps in Jung’s writings... maybe in some eastern source that Jung was fond of. Surely Stein is referencing some weighty source, but surprise! Stein found it in a fortune cookie. God works in mysterious ways.

See the end in the beginning. Here we are, just at the beginning of Advent. What of an ending can we see?

It would be no fun at all if there were only one ending showing itself in this beginning, but the most obvious end that shows up now is Christmas. We are waiting for the coming of Jesus – that is an end of Advent that we can see in its beginning.

As a sort of collective secular/sacred amalgam we have a social concept of Christmas. It is a happy, warm, lovely thing... all sweetness and light... all Currier and Ives and Grandma Moses paintings with young people on sleds in the snow and chestnuts roasting on an open fire... yuletide carolers outside and hot, spiced cider inside. This is what I want to prepare for in Advent. I see this in the beginning of Advent.

This is, sadly, not a very substantial view of Advent nor the reality of Christmas and Jesus doesn’t come into a fantasy world. However well we decorate, this is not a world of joy and happiness. It has great beauty, but it is also a world of sorrow, of injustice, of genocide, of prejudice, of corruption. In other words, it the same world into which Jesus was born two millennia ago.

It was a cruel and a dangerous world then as now. Jesus did not arrive in a world of decorated trees and eggnog and cozy scenes. They didn’t have tear gas then, but if they did, it surely would have been in use. Jesus arrived in a world that had no space for him at all. He arrived in a barn and bunked with animals – because the polite society (that’s us) couldn’t accommodate him – we live in the same world.

Anyone with their heart set on a silent, holy, calm, and bright Christmas night, needs to look afar and see the end in the beginning. Pay attention to Luke. In the Gospel for today, Jesus tells us there will be signs among the stars (these are warning signs) and there will be distress among the nations. People will faint from fear. It's completely inappropriate, but I hear Bette Davis in All About Eve warning us to fasten our seatbelts... it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Welcome to Advent.

I gave serious thought to ending this sermon here... it would be dramatic and clever... but it wouldn't be right. A message that says things are bad and they will only get worse is not the message of Advent. It is true that things are bad, and they likely will get worse. But that isn’t seeing the end in the beginning. It is only seeing the beginning.

The message of the Gospel, the good news of Jesus, is not one of sorrow. At the same time, it's not one of simple happiness. In a culture of sound bites and slogans, the complex and rich good news of Jesus too often gets simplified into one of two messages – Jesus loves you very much, so repent or you're going to hell; or Jesus loves you very much and wants you to be very rich. Neither of these has much to do with Jesus. Neither of them is the message of Advent.

In the middle of this, according to Luke, there is a fig tree. As summer approaches, its limbs grow tender and it puts forth leaves. It does what fig trees do.

Please – could I have a much more obvious illustration...

Jesus seems to be saying that as you can tell summer is coming by watching the fig tree, so too you can tell that God is coming by watching... something...

But the fig tree doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary. It doesn’t do anything unexpected. A philosopher might say it expresses its essential “fig-tree-ness.” As summer approaches, its limbs turn tender and it puts out leaves. But it wouldn’t be a fig tree if it didn’t. And a skilled agricultural society, like the world into which Jesus was born, hardly needs a fig tree to tell them summer is coming...

Perhaps this fig tree is telling us something more complex. Perhaps its lesson is not about changing seasons, but about ways of living. It lives in the world and responds to it by doing fig tree things.

Trees turn up in a number of places in our tradition. We start in the beginning with the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The tradition is littered with fig trees. When post-apple Adam and Eve seek to cover themselves, they turn to leaves of the Fig Tree and the Land promised in Deuteronomy is filled with milk, honey, and fig trees. In the Gospels, Jesus curses a fig tree and it withers. And in this morning's Gospel, we are asked to consider a fig tree. But the great tree reference is, of course, the cross. Jesus is nailed to the tree. See the end in the beginning.

So, this image that Jesus gives us to consider, the fig tree, is ancient and complex... Beautiful and terrible.

In asking us to contemplate the Fig Tree, I think Jesus is calling us to live in the world and be present. As the fig tree does what it is called to do, so we, followers of Jesus, are to do what we are called to do. Signs and warnings notwithstanding, we are to get about the business of following Jesus.

What Jesus calls us to do is not obscure. If we are to live our baptismal covenant with integrity, then we will have to care for the sick, the poor, those who have no power and no defense. We will have to pray and worship God and be prepared to treat the least of God’s children as nothing less than God’s children. We will have to resist the seductive call to accumulate wealth. We will have to be humble. We will have to love our neighbors and ourselves. We will have to make peace. Simple enough... Can we see these ends in this beginning?

Be on your guard, Jesus says, so that your hearts are not weighed down with drunkenness, dissipation and worries. Now maybe it's just me, but I thought drunkenness and dissipation were the things we do to keep our hearts from being weighed down...

Being on guard is not a waiting game. Maybe this is another lesson of the fig tree. The fig tree isn’t in any way waiting for spring, or anything else. It's just doing the right thing at the right time. This is a lesson we can well learn in Advent.

We look for the coming of Jesus, but we do not wait for the coming of Jesus. It would be nice if, as soon as Jesus gets here, then we can get to work following Jesus, but it doesn’t work that way. We stay on guard, awake in our faith... faith that must be lived. Christian faith is active. We live our lives in the faith that Jesus could return at any moment and we live our lives in the faith that Jesus has already returned, is already with us. We see the end in the beginning.

Being on guard doesn’t mean sitting around silently, pensively, nervously drumming our fingers. It means using the gifts we have been given to build God’s kingdom just as the fig tree gets about the business of being a fig tree.

This is Advent, the start of a new year. If we look afar, we can see the end in the beginning and the beginning in the end.

Is there a place in what we see for eggnog and carols... decorated trees and scenes from Grandma Moses? I surely hope so. A vision without beauty is no vision. It’s a horror show.

But if we think we have made the world beautiful because we have decorated, then we are living an illusion. In this beginning time, this Advent, we don’t just see the end, a beautiful world where justice flows like a mighty river... we become the end in this beginning. We become the healing power of God’s love in a very hurting world.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Feast of James Huntington - Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bob Pierson, OHC
Feast of Fr. James Huntington - Tuesday, November 27, 2018

A few days ago I ran across a post on Facebook that asked the question: “If you could spend an hour visiting with any person from the past, who would it be?” I didn't post a response, but as I think about it, I would really like to spend an hour visiting with our founder, Father James Huntington.
He was an amazing man from all accounts. Like Abram, he heard the call of God and walked away from an upper class lifestyle to live as a monk at a time when monks were held in derision by many in the Episcopal Church. Initially he had the support of two friends, Fathers Dodd and Cameron, but when they both dropped out, Fr. James persevered and made Life Profession by himself on November 25, 1884.

In the wider church, he is remembered for his concern for the poor. His biographer, Vida Scudder, describes the life of that early group of monks, making them sound a lot like the worker priests of Paris. But they were also monks, and very dedicated to the liturgy, especially the Divine Office, and their own personal spiritual growth. The whole thing proved to be too much for them, and eventually they gave up the very active service of the poor in New York City for the more contemplative setting of rural Maryland. I wonder how Father Huntington felt about that move? He certainly did not give up on the cause of the poor, and he continued to travel far and wide to promote things like labor unions, the single tax, and help for the working poor. He evidently did not see a conflict between monastic life and concern for the poor.

I always look forward to the celebration of his feast at this time of year. I am especially fond of our celebration of Matins and Vespers, where we use those wonderful quotes from his Rule as antiphons for the psalmody. Of course, his most famous quote is:
“Holiness is the brightness of Divine Love; love must act and light must shine and fire must burn.”
If we could sit down and visit with Father Huntington today, I suspect he would ask us about how we are acting in love, as individuals and as a community. He would want to know how we are showing our own concern for the poor. And he would want to know that our commitment to our own spiritual growth is just as strong as his was.

Of course, he had his faults, as we all do, and I suspect that he would be compassionate with us even as he would continue to urge us to do better. He said: Humility, obedience, love: this is the holiness without which we cannot see the Lord.” As we continue to follow the example Father Huntington gave us, may we humbly listen for the voice of God in our day, and recommit ourselves to responding in love as he did.
"The cross is our all-sufficing treasure, and His love our never-ending reward."

Sunday, November 25, 2018

Christ the King B - Sunday, November 25, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Proper 29 B – Sunday, November 25, 2018

2 Samuel 23:1-7 or Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

I have ambivalent opinions and feelings about the phrase “Christ the King.” I will readily admit that Christ may be King of the Universe regardless of my opinions and feelings about it.

After all, Jesus is part of the one and indivisible Trinity. So when we read about Jesus announcing that the Kingdom of God is close at hand, we retrofit Jesus into the phrase the Kingdom of God. We see God the Creator and Sustainer of All as putting Jesus, his Anointed One, the Christ, on the throne above all earthly thrones.

But biblical or otherwise, there is no metaphor we can use about God that fully encompasses God. Each and every one of our metaphors for God grasp at some aspect of the Godhead without fully capturing God.

Can you hear me struggling with the phrase “Christ the King?” So I tried to not deal with it in this sermon. And as is usual, in such instances, God would not let me get away with it. So here go the musings of one who prefers other titles of Jesus.

*****

Illogically, I have no problem with the title “Lord.”  As a child, I learned to address Jesus as “Seigneur,” French for “Lord” without thinking about what a lord was in the world. It was like a term of endearment between me and Jesus.

But I should have similar problems to call Jesus “Lord”, if I have problems with “King.” Lord is an appellation for a person who has authority, control, or power over others acting like a master, a chief, or a ruler. It can also be used to refer to a deity with the same attributes.

I think that is also how I think of King in the title “Christ the King.” It makes me think of an overlord who can be arbitrary in his exercise of absolute power.

*****

Somehow, my admittedly limited concept of God focuses more on attributes of caring, empathizing, guiding, teaching and unifying. I do understand that Jesus is not always meek and sweet. But I do think of him primarily as a Lover; my Beloved and lover, your lover, your lover. I’m not worried about sharing my divine lover.

I guess that’s why I am always so moved by the passage of the gospel according to John where Thomas exclaims ‘My Lord and my God!’ (John 20:28)


*****

As for the image of a King, I suppose the Psalms don’t help me when they state “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.” (Psalm 146:3) King is an attribute I see in humans not in God.

It seems to me that in his lifetime, Jesus shirked the title of King. I think he was aware that it was a political construct that reduced him to a zealot who would overthrow the Roman occupiers to restore the Kingdom of Israel.

But as John the Evangelist has Jesus answer to Pilate: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” (John 18:36)

Jesus is willing to play with the King metaphor because that is how Pilate understands the dynamic between them. Pilate is guarding the supremacy of the Roman Empire against any competing claims to political power. But Jesus is beyond that power dynamic. His purpose is to testify to the truth (John 18:37); a higher truth than that of any Kingdom, especially an earthly one.

*****

The only time I understand Jesus as implying he will be King in the Gospels is in the Gospel according to Matthew where Jesus speaks privately to the apostles.

“Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” (Matthew 19:28)

If the apostles are on twelve thrones, who is this Son of Man seated on his throne but Jesus himself? Did the apostles understand this saying as referring to an earthly restoration of the Kingdom of Israel? Maybe.

Is that what Judas told the High Priest Jesus was up to? That may be why they accused him of calling himself the “King of the Jews,” a title we don’t find claimed directly by Jesus anywhere in the Gospels.

In any case, that would have been a reductive interpretation of what Jesus was trying to tell the disciples. It seems to me Jesus was referring to a metaphorical Kingdom beyond secular ones; a throne he would ascend to after his resurrection.

*****

The feast of Christ the King is a fairly recent one in the Christian Church having been instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical letter Quas Primas (In The First). It came in reaction to the horrors of World War 1 and the rise of totalitarian regimes (fascist as well a communist ones).

In his encyclical, Pius writes "...the Word of God, as consubstantial with the Father, has all things in common with him, and therefore has necessarily supreme and absolute dominion over all things created."(Pope Pius XI, Quas primas, §7).

In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus says: "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me." (Matthew 28:18)

*****

I do understand the Christian impetus to establish the primacy of God’s dominion on creation over that of secular regimes and ideologies. In the face of imperialism or totalitarianism, it is very reassuring to think of God as an almighty monarch who can protect us from the abuses of earthly powers.

Maybe there is mileage yet in the title of Christ the King as a means of resistance in the face of abusive uses of political powers.

*****

In the meantime, I will focus on what my Beloved taught us: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Lord Jesus Christ, Beloved, you are the Alpha and the Omega. You are my Lord and my God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. Make me an instrument of your Love.

Amen.

Thursday, November 22, 2018

A Thanksgiving homily - Thursday, November 22, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC
Thanksgiving B - Thursday, November 22, 2018

Joel 2:21-27
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Matthew 6:25-33

Click here for an audio version of the homily


Good Morning! Happy Thanksgiving!

We all have so many God-given gifts to be grateful for. I hope you take some time today to count your own blessings.

Here at the monastery, we are particularly grateful for 116 years of prayer and worship in this location in West Park. The sixteen monks who call this monastery home are the stewards of 26 stunning acres of river-hugging land and 75,000 square feet of beautiful buildings, some dating back to 1902, 1921 and 1965.

We wouldn´t be the stewards of this wonderful inheritance without the vision, care, hard work and commitment of generations of monks and benefactors of this monastery. Today, we give thanks for each one of them.

We hope more monks and benefactors will continue in their tracks for generations of prayers and worship to come on these hallowed grounds. And we pledge ourselves to continue to be visionary, careful, hard-working and committed to the flourishing of monastic life in this place.

Three years ago, we started planning for our Open Doors, Open Hearts capital campaign. The impetus came from the need to upgrade this church of Saint Augustine which will celebrate its centenary in 2021. We wanted to raise the necessary funds soon enough to hopefully complete all the improvements before celebrating that milestone.

Of course, there was a need for capital improvements beyond just our worship space so we widened the scope of the campaign to encompass our ministry of hospitality, our financial sustainability, as well as our worship.

Today, we are officially closing the full year of public solicitations for our Open Doors, Open Hearts capital campaign. If you didn´t contribute yet, don´t worry, we won´t refuse further gifts to the campaign, but we will stop asking!

By the generosity of over 350 donors, we have been very successful in this campaign. Our initial goal was to collect pledges for $2.550.000. To date, the capital campaign has received pledges totaling $2.658.000. We are blessed with benefactors who understand the value of the life and ministry of this monastery. We are blessed and very grateful.

In a few moments, we will bless all the pledge cards received in our Open Hearts, Open Doors capital campaign to honor the many givers who contributed to our efforts. Thank you for a successful fundraising campaign. And to every one of you who sus
tains us in prayer, companionship, volunteering, and treasure: Thank You Very Much Indeed!

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him, all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Life Profession of the Monastic Vow by Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero - November 20, 2018

Life Profession of the Monastic Vow by Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero - November 20, 2018
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC

Well, I admit that I’m feeling like a proud father today as we gather to celebrate this love story. The significance of being created in the Image of God is that we always remain capable of a relationship with God. This is a human potential that is never lost. We are made to meet God, and it is in this encounter that we become simultaneously fully human and fully divine.1

The underlying purpose of all human development, including spiritual, is to dismantle the obstacles to full humanity and to help us to grow toward a humanity that is more complete. Desire for God is not a merely personal, or even an eccentric choice, but it is a consequence of what we are as humans.

The dynamics for divine intimacy and human intimacy are the same. I believe one is a school for the other. Most start with human intimacy and move from there to divine. But some begin with the divine, first learning how to be vulnerable before God, and then passing it on to others. A few follow the road less traveled, to give themselves over to God alone, in solitude and silence, in prayer and willing surrender in community. In responding to God’s call, a monk fulfills an important role in the Church: he visibly witnesses in his life to the absolute priority of God.

Josép, the God who searches hearts has shown you the path for your life and you have come to know it in this Order, with these brothers, running, as Benedict says, “on the path of God’s commandments, with your heart overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love”.3 Over these years your love and dedication have been an inspiration to us. That love has been deepened by the trials you’ve experienced. Today you make your commitment for life, knowing that the paschal mystery of Jesus’ dying and rising will be the pattern of your monastic life.

In a few minutes, you're going to affirm that you are making your commitment freely. To be completely honest, I think this might be stretching the truth. What I would like to suggest is that the call of God to this Order has so taken root in you and grown over these last years, that to describe it in words that resonate with the idea of consumer choice is hardly the truth. You have found and been found by God here, in the life that you share with your brothers, in a way that makes this next and ultimate step entirely necessary. No human force compels you, but the love and presence of God is compelling you at a deeper level. And to that call you are giving your consent. To do anything less would be to deny both God and your very self. Parker Palmer wrote:
Our deepest calling is to grow into our own deepest authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks, we will also find our path of authentic service in the world.4
People come to monasteries to achieve their full potential. Monastic discipline aims simply at removing the obstacles to this goal.

In his latest book, Michael Casey muses on the possibility that perhaps we have put too much emphasis in the monastic life on “seeking” rather than on “finding”, on keeping rules rather than on personal growth. 5 While the monk comes here seeking God, it becomes more and more evident that God has sought us out. In the depths of the heart we hear the invitation to abide with Christ. We cannot live this life apart from abiding in the love of Christ. He is the source of our life and love and all that flows from it in community. Jesus challenges us to love as we have been loved by him. Love is a transforming power more than a superficial emotional expression. It is a disciplined habit of care and concern, that like all virtues, can be perfected only over a lifetime. Your monastic life is the call to the all-inclusive love of God. Giving a witness to that love, leads deeper and deeper into the meaning of joy, of being chosen by Christ, and of preferring nothing to Christ.

You have come into an Order and a community which is far from perfect. In your time of formation and temporary profession, the character defects of this community made you wonder more than once, as all of us have: is this for me? God intends us to live together in the fragility of human imperfection. In this we come to know ourselves, each other, and God. We need the other to be like a mirror for us. A mirror doesn’t change the image; it simply shows it as it is. Those closest to us hold a mirror up to us, revealing our good side and our dark side and reminding us that we still haven’t really learned to love. The Gospel gives us an assurance that we are operating inside of an abundant, infinite Love. So even though we will constantly fail, it is not the final word. We also have hope that everything can be healed and restored. We ask one another for forgiveness, as we confess to one another that once again we didn’t do it right. It’s when we do it wrong that we are taught vulnerability. It’s not a vulnerability and an intimacy that we need just now and then. Eventually, it becomes second nature to admit we are wrong, to ask for forgiveness but not to hate ourselves for it.

You are to be compassionate with your weaknesses and those of your brothers, and obedient in service toward all. A spirit of cooperation emerges only as we develop a forbearance toward one another. Your pursuits will include your own happiness but will always be measured by the needs of others and a generosity of spirit. Your love must be filled with courage and tenacity. As you advance in this way of life, you will strengthen your brothers to become what God has intended for us: men of prayer and work, of gracious hospitality, of humble service for all who come seeking God. The discipline of obedience to the Superior and the community is the school in which each brother practices his obedience to God. Our fundamental obligation in obedience is to be or to become what God wills. To do what God wills is secondary. We act according to what we are. The Rule sets out good and gentle guidance as to how a community can seek to identify God's will. But the task is always to discern, not to decide. Your life commitment to God is indeed a new beginning and a sign that you, with God’s help, will be able to live the good zeal Benedict encourages in all of us.6

For a Benedictine, the stability of knowing your place and community for life, provides the context for faithfulness in the instabilities of life. Contemplative life for us is the challenge of remembering God in all that we do, say and are during the day, as we live and are molded by the rhythm of our daily routine. The challenge of the vow is that it gives less opportunity to run away from those parts of us that God is seeking to convert and transform. Day by day and year by year God reveals to us more and more of the true self we are made to be. The task of conversion is not that of a moment but of a lifetime. It is a sign of our commitment to allow God to continue that work within us.

The only people who change, who are transformed, are people who feel safe, who feel their dignity, and who feel loved. That’s what we try to do for one another—offer relationships in which we can change. We need a combination of safety and conflict to keep moving forward in life.7

Of course, that can only be done with divine love flowing through us. In this way, we can love things and people in themselves, for themselves—not for what they do for us. We look beyond what Thomas Merton calls “the shadow and the disguise”8 of things until we can see them in their connectedness and wholeness. That takes work: constant detachment from ourselves—our conditioning, our preferences, and our knee-jerk reactions. We can only allow divine love to flow by way of a transformed mind that allows us to see God in everything and empowers our behavior.

Your life vow will not put an end to doubts, and that is not a bad thing. Unlike answers that presume the static nature of God and life, doubt stretches us beyond ourselves. It is what leaves us open to truth, however difficult it may be to accept. Without doubt, our faith would be the kind that happens around us but not in us—we would go through the motions, without passion, without care---which makes the living of this life a senseless misery. Facing our doubts, we forge the beginning of real faith.

Paul reminds us in the Epistle that when faced with and wearied by life’s difficulties, we can count on God’s nearness to us in Christ. He uses the language of rejoicing to encourage us. Christ’s presence is the source of our joy. Joy is a discipline of perception, not an emotion dependent on circumstances. It’s not an escape from the pain of life; it’s a reconsideration and reinvestment in life from a liberating perspective. By perceiving and rejoicing in Christ’s living presence with us, one let’s go of being one’s own savior.

We who are here in this holy place today represent both the journey you have taken thus far and the one that lies before you. We assure you that our love and prayers will be supporting you in the times ahead. But above all we know that this step which you are taking will be a blessing to you, to us, to the Church, and to the world. +Amen.

1. Michael Casey, Grace: On the Journey to God (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2018),41.
2. Benedict, Rule of St Benedict, Prologue 49.
3. Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening to the Voice of Vocation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
2000), 49.
4. Michael Casey, Grace: On the Journey to God (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2018), 36.
5. Benedict, Rule of St Benedict, 72.
6. Adapted from Richard Rohr: Essential Teachings on Love, eds. Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger
(Orbis Books: 2018), 224-225.
8. Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Directions: 1973), 236.

Sunday, November 18, 2018

Proper 28B - Sunday, November 18, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
Proper 28 B - Sunday, November 18, 2018

1 Samuel 2:1-10
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Mark 13:1-8





With something so unexpected that defies explanation, what else was Hannah to do but sing. She sings of the God who turns wrong things right, who judges justly, who delivers the needy and puts down the oppressor, who brings death and makes alive, who blesses the barren with children. Her voice joins that of the prophet Miriam and Mary of Nazareth in praise of a God who works deliverance through extraordinary circumstances. Our understanding of God’s power is born within the struggles of our history.

As elsewhere in Scripture, a story on an epic scale begins with a small domestic scene. Hannah is unable to conceive. In a patriarchal culture, childbearing was a woman’s only unique ability. To be unable to conceive was a cause for great shame. It was often viewed as a sign of divine punishment. Her barrenness is the subject of ridicule from her husband’s second wife. She is accused of drunkenness by the inept and insensitive priest, Eli. She asks God to remember her and she makes a promise that a child will be dedicated to God for life.

Hannah embodies both the patriarchal assumptions of her worth as well as God’s concern for her. Her prayers are sincere expressions of her anguish and her dependence on God. She did not come with formal petition or traditional sacrifice. Hers is a prayer of groaning that comes from a place of utter vulnerability. She comes in loneliness, isolation, and despair. She comes as a human being who knows herself to be known and loved by God. God is responsive and present to her. Her humility and honesty in this relationship allows her to unburden herself. Strength springs from her intense awareness of God’s power. Her connection with God transforms her even before she conceives. She is empowered not by might, or by political influence, but by her intimate connection to God, by being spiritually awake.

Hannah’s song of celebration gives voice to the praise and surprise any of us might feel after a dramatic reversal. She gives birth to her son, Samuel. The birth is not a private wonder but a gift of possibility for all of Israel. Samuel is one of the most significant figures in their history. There’s a strong metaphorical connection between Hannah’s barrenness and despair and the emotions of a nation, not unlike our own today, looking for a way to feel secure and hopeful in turbulent times.

Hannah’s story conveys a strong word of hope and encouragement to us by her bold trust in God, receptivity to God, and her praise for the goodness of God. For a pilgrim people, which is an apt description of Israel and the Church, there will always be need for endurance, perseverance, patience, and hope. God’s people live out of the past and into the future, a future that has been promised but is yet to be fully realized. The vision of reality sung by Hannah invites us to see the world as God intends, to behold what God is bringing about. It’s a vision surprising to some and threatening to others.

As we approach the end of the liturgical year, we’re invited to see our life as God’s people in light of the Song of Hannah. We’re given a fresh vision of the new world that is on its way, a world that is not dependent upon human efforts, plans, or strategies, but a world that is God’s gift. Her song summons us to offer ourselves to the One who alone is worthy of praise.

The letter to the Hebrews also holds up that vision. It’s written to a tired and discouraged congregation. They are tired of trying to live the Christian life in a time and culture that offers no support for it. They’re discouraged about how evil still seems to persist. As a result, they have begun to question the value of being Christian. Attendance at worship has slipped, zeal for mission has waned, and the kind of congregational life that is rich in love and compassion has begun to dissipate. The writer offers an invitation for the community to be organized in a new and living way, by trusting more deeply in Jesus Christ. He reminds them that holiness is a Spirit given ability to live in a posture of confidence before God. It is one lived in hope--- a hope that is not rooted in human effort, but solely in the faithfulness of God. This sanctified life is also lived in community. It is there that we are able to stir up and be stirred up to love and good works. The gift of Christ is not one that we receive and keep to ourselves. It is meant for the building up of the whole body, living in solidarity with others, and living with a sense of urgency.

That urgency is expressed in the eight short verses of today’s Gospel. They’re in Jerusalem in the week of his Passion. As the disciples are leaving the temple, they marvel at the buildings that seem so immoveable. Jesus then predicts the horror of an apocalypse of political unrest, disasters and persecutions. He tells them and us that when chaos comes, not to be worried. Things may seem to have fallen apart and anarchy loosed on the world. Nevertheless, the center will hold. He sets out a way to live that does not focus all attention on the chaos but on trust in God. Today, our focus must not only be on the signs themselves, but rather on the One who enables us to look up in chaos and claim the certainty of blessing. Life in our country today summons us to acknowledge the unfinished nature of what God has set into motion. Our transformation personally and communally is not yet complete. To dwell in that place requires trust and encouragement. If you want to know the whole truth pay more attention to the Gospel you hear than to the evil you see.

Jesus’ call to vigilance is an implicit command to keep following his word and example despite the chaos. Perhaps the most daunting challenge for us in the North American context, so set on instant gratification, is this one left to us by Mark: “Beware…keep awake,” watch, resist, hold out for the coming of the Son of Man. Like Hannah, enter into and experience God’s presence fully, honestly, authentically--- luxuriating in God’s loving acceptance which first requires our own self-acceptance. The freedom of knowing that God loves and accepts us translates into selfless service as we become creative participants in the ongoing saving work of God. +Amen

Sunday, November 11, 2018

Proper 27 B - Sunday, November 11, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Roy Parker, OHC
Proper 27 B - Sunday, November 11, 2018

1 Kings 17:8-16
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44


For a clearer understanding of the character of the scribes of whom Jesus speaks in this passage it will be helpful to give a description which will allow us a more accurate understanding of the poor widow’s contribution to the temple treasury, some culled from the Anchor Bible commentary.

In Mark, the scribes are the principal opponents of Jesus and they are frequently mentioned — twenty-two times in all,  The present instance is the only recorded example of Jesus inveighing against the conduct of the scribes, as distinct from their teaching. Although the scribes and the Pharisees are linked in the condemnation of legalism in Matthew, it is important to draw a proper distinction.

Whereas the Pharisees had an established position, and an honorable one, as interpreters of the Law and its traditions, and were also regarded as highly patriotic, the scribes as “bookmen” were regarded mainly as recorders or collectors of opinions and less authoritative than the Pharisees. As is often the case with those of lesser status, they are represented in the New Testament as not only argumentative, but given to ostentation to magnify their public image — like a classmate of mine at the Webb School in Claremont, California who, having failed to win an athletic varsity letter — a large red capital E — from his previous school, purloined one and injudiciously wore it to breakfast the day after Webb’s football defeat by the Emerson School.

Beyond the issue of ostentation, Jesus condemned the scribes in that they are held responsible for the exactions which effectively destroyed widows’ estates, all on behalf of a temple still in building and soon to come to an end. One of the salient features of Jesus’ confrontation with the scribes in Mark is the connection made between them and the temple. Though one may protest that the costs of the upkeep of the temple and its round of sacrificial observances were the concern of the clergy, Mark’s gospel firmly lays responsibility for extravagance and excess at the door of the scribes, and they are the enemies of Jesus before the clergy enter the picture. The scribes in and around Jerusalem are quite regularly associated with the clergy. Any challenge by Jesus to the temple system and its clergy is accepted by the scribes as a challenge to their standing.

In this light, we are to understand the charge that the scribes offer long prayers. Not that they are responsible for the worship and the liturgies of the temple, but that they consistently urge upon people the fundamental necessity of keeping the interminable round of observances in being. Perhaps we ought to understand the phrase for appearances’ sake not as an indication of pretense, but as a judgment by Jesus that the observances themselves were but an outward show without substance.

The narrative of the poor widow’s offering is, among other things, a continuation of the previous attack on the scribes and their part, as Mark sees it, in the whole official establishment of Judaism in Jerusalem. The judgement of Jesus is that the scribes were like leeches on the Jewish faithful and not the least of their sins was their insistence on the support of the temple system, and all that it implied, even to the sacrificing of widows’ property. Jesus does not commend the widow at all for sacrificing all she had; rather, the story should be read as a lament for a system which could end in the destitution of a widow.

Part of us is attracted to system while another part harbors an expectation which cannot be satisfied by a system, as in Tagore’s aphorism “While God waits for the temple to be built of love, people bring stones.”  This was brought home to me some years ago on a Saturday morning in Berkeley, California some years ago outside the Jesuit School of Theology. The previous evening Raymond Brown, renowned commentator on the Fourth Gospel, had flown in to give a public lecture, and I just happened to meet him that following morning. It also happened that I was to preach the Sunday sermon at a local church on John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand for which I had figured out what seemed to me  a brilliant explanation which discounted the miraculous.  On spying Professor Brown I thought, “What a perfect opportunity to get a verification of my theory.” Dr. Brown, to be sure, listened carefully, but when I had spoken he contradicted me very forcefully regarding the multiplication of loaves, “But they were expecting this!” “Well,” I thought, “back to rewrite.”

Such expectation is displayed by both widows in today’s readings, marginalized women driven to put all their eggs in the basket of God’s promise, persons acting out of the only abundance they had, an abundance of heart.  As a matter of historical interest, by the way, the advertisements our Founder distributed for his mission talks often concluded with the exhortation “Expect Much.”

When operating at the margins of possibility, you are liable to be more ecstatic than cautious and it might land you in trouble. Like Harry James’ solo on “Life Goes to a Party” in Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert described by the liner notes as “like someone rushing out onto an icy pond and discovering they ain’t got skates.” By that point in the concert, the vibe was so hot that Harry James was possessed by it. This is what Raymond Brown meant: Five thousand people possessed by the vibe of Jesus presiding at Passover — for sure they were expecting this. Once upon a time the philosopher Nietzsche came up with the insight that creation takes place in the realms of music, and so I imagine the expectation of those in the presence of Jesus at Passover might have been a kind of creating musical event, a Passover light opera.

The only formula I can offer for reconciling system with expectation is that they must constantly be wrestled together.

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Proper 26 B - Sunday, November 4, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
Proper 26 B - Sunday, November 4, 2018

Ruth 1:1-18
Hebrews 9:11-14
Mark 12:28-34

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

I was recently surfing the internet and came across this headline:  “Tech Community Outraged after SQLite Founder Adopts Benedictine Code of Conduct” The first paragraph of the article reads:

The founder of the world's most widely used database engine ignited a firestorm in the tech community after it was revealed that he had posted a code of conduct for users based on the teachings of the Bible and an ancient order of monks founded by Benedict of Nursia.

What he had posted was Chapter 4 of the Rule of St. Benedict:  “The Tools for Good Works.”

The chapter comprises 72 exhortations or commandments, beginning with the Two Great Commandments that we heard this morning in the Gospel:  Love of God and Love of Neighbor, commandments which Jesus quotes from the Torah (Deuteronomy and Leviticus). The chapter goes on to add most of the Ten Commandments and various other behaviors or proscriptions.

Taken together they constitute a thorough moral examination of Christian living, ranging in content from observable, external actions such as relieving the lot of the poor and clothing the naked and burying the dead and not being lazy and not giving way to anger to more interior practices and dispositions that we might term habits of the heart:

Don't nurse a grudge
Utter only the truth from heart and mouth
Do not return evil for evil
Love your enemies
Don't be a grumbler or a detractor
Hate no one
Don't be jealous
Don't be proud or arrogant
Don't love quarreling
Don't be addicted to wine

There are even some explicitly religious directives:

Prefer nothing more than the love of Christ
Love fasting and chastity
Deny yourself in order to follow Christ
Keep death daily before your eyes
Put your hope in God

As you might imagine, this didn't go over big in Silicon Valley...and maybe not with most of us if we are honest.  It's an exhaustive and perhaps exhausting list and would be frankly impossible—is impossible—were it not for the final 72nd tool:  “Never despair of God's mercy.

Most of these “tools” are not commandments or laws in our usual sense—enforceable dictums--but only in an extended sense, just as the Two Great Commandments that we hear from Torah and from Jesus and which begin this list are not.  But they help me, they help all of us to better understand the content of those two great commandments. They “unpack” them for us, so to speak. And indeed the two are fundamentally and ultimately one.  Jesus invites us to acts of love...acts which are both interior and exterior, internal dispositions of the heart and external observable behaviors.  And unless we have both, cultivate both, our loving is incomplete and weak.  And so are we.

Here in this community, we are fond of quoting a line from the rule of our founder James Otis Sargent Huntington: “Love must act as light must shine and fire must burn.”  This too is not a commandment in the usual sense—a demand or directive. It is rather a description of the very nature of love.  It is not the case that we must first get our act together and then be or do something loving. Rather, it is the very nature or essence or character of love to overflow in acts of love, just as it is of the very nature or character of light to shine and of fire to burn. And this is not original with our Father Founder. St. Ignatius Loyola says as much in his Spiritual Exercises:  “Love ought to show itself in deeds over and above words.

We rightly say that the God the Holy Trinity Itself naturally overflows in creativity revealing God and Godself in an abundance, and overflow, an outpouring of love.

And what is true of God is true of us...all of us.  All of us are lovers, though few of us love well.

St. Augustine says, “Everybody loves: the question is, what is the object of our love?  In Scripture, we are not urged to stop loving, but instead to choose what we love.”  To choose carefully and wisely and sweetly, with all our whole heart and mind and strength.

There's a quote going around on the Internet and available now in posters and note cards attributed to Pedro Arrupe, SJ, former Superior General of the Jesuits  In fact, he never said it, but—like the so-called Prayer of St. Francis—it seems to me, at least for the most part, true. You may have seen it:

Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.

The Tools of Good Works are finally a commentary and explication of the two great Commandments—which are indeed only one.  They teach us how to love, what love must look like, what shape and texture our loving will have.  They offer us some of the signs and signposts of love. Yes: let us be careful what we love. But let us not fail to love and to love as Christians, guarding and guiding both our hearts and our hands: “Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

There is a postscript: SQLite ultimately had to abandon the Rule of Benedict as their Code of Conduct. It didn't meet industry standards. So they re-posted it as their “Code of Ethics,” substituting instead the Code of Conduct from Mozilla, of Firefox fame.  They note however that they and their developers nevertheless pledge to follow the spirit of the Rule of Benedict to the best of their ability and see it as a promise to their clients that this is how we will behave in our community.  They add:  “We will treat you his way regardless of how you treat us.” Not bad.  Not bad at all.

In a hundred years, when Mozilla and even SQLite are forgotten, folks will still be reading the words of Jesus and, I venture to predict, the words of our Holy Father Benedict.  We will still need a school of love, a treasury of tools of good works.  And we will need to be reminded as much as we do today: “Never despair of God's mercy.

Finally please, if you haven't done so already: vote on Tuesday.”