Corpus Christi - Year B: May 31, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br.  Randy Greve, OHC

Corpus Christi - Thursday, May 27, 2018

Deuteronomy 8:2-3 
1 Corinthians 11:23-29

John 6:47-58

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

“The Buried Life” by Matthew Arnold:

“But often, in the world’s most crowded streetsBut often, in the din of strifeThere rises an unspeakable desireAfter the knowledge of our buried life:A thirst to spend our fire and restless forceIn tracking out our true, original course;A longing to inquireInto a mystery of this heart which beatsSo wild, so deep in us – to knowWhence our lives come and where they go.”

The poet intimates that there is something more, beneath the noisy, crowded streets – it remains unspeakable and buried, yet it calls. He is touching on the big questions of meaning, of purpose, of love – of the big “whys” of why me, why now, why here. Jesus has something to say in reply – not in formulas, dogmas, rituals, moral absolutes or easy steps to happiness. Jesus speaks in reply and unburies life, frees life, deepens mystery. This is strange and indecipherable language about what we most desire, yet it lures us with its opacity, haunts with its confidence:  from the gospel reading:  “Eternal life; Bread of life; Living bread; Live forever; Life of the world; Living Father; I live; Live because of me; Live forever”. I sense perhaps the beginnings of a theme. The Greek word for life contains a sense of movement which is impossible to bring over into English without lots more words. 

The English for “life” would be something like “the meaning-bearing energy of spirit beyond mere physical existence that is continuously being given and being received without loss or beginning or end”. Jesus speaks in the declarative and definitive. His life, most graphically put in language as his very flesh and blood, received and consumed, is and brings eternal life. The image could not be any clearer – he repeats it in several different ways. It is almost as if he is straining to express what to him is obvious, what to him is his own abiding in the Father – the life without which he would not be, not know who he was or what he was to do. He describes himself and then us in relation to his being. The intimacy is startling and offensive. It is all so achingly beautiful, so purely mystical, and so absolutely beyond us. Jesus is addressing the soul, the quality of human existence in perfect union with the love of God, the divine within that because it is held in the embrace of God lives in the eternal satisfaction and fulfillment of hunger and thirst. The mystics talk often about how we get an inkling of the presence and grace of God in our souls when the consolation of feeding on the body and blood of Jesus, abiding in him, leads to a deeper desire, which consoles us more, which creates desire all the more, and so on. The nourishment of God brings peace and a restless longing for more. The life of which Jesus speaks is an end of the journey, the filling of desire, only to send us at the same moment onward to new searching and hollows our spiritual bellies to create anew the very appetite he himself feeds.

Insofar as language can apprehend the mystery of Jesus’ identity as Bread of Life, the nourishment that satiates and leads to hunger is a theme woven through the contemplative tradition of the faith. Truth claims held with care and humility, knowing their power is beyond our comprehension. It is, however, a lousy evangelism program. While our souls abide in this mystery, our self-will recoils from this mystery. Rather than dwell in it, savor it, my ego wants to fix the mystery, solve it, escape it, above all to know, understand. When I do not attend to the soul, when I give in to fear and react from control, the mystery at the heart of love sounds like so much nonsense. What fills the void is what Daniel Taylor calls the myth of certainty - a set of immutable, rationalized, precisely defined and defendable beliefs. 

These beliefs make sense and predictability out of an often senseless and chaotic world. The beliefs may in themselves be true, but when used to avoid transcendence and reduce God to my understandable and controllable categories, certainty is idolatry. And as I look at American Christianity, certainty sells!  The commentaries on this gospel are full of it – full of language that seeks to explain with the mind language addressed to the soul. One streams says, We know from the Bible that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, so eating and drinking Jesus must refer to our faith in him as he gave his life for us on the cross. Another stream of the Church would say; clearly the language points to Holy Communion and proves that within the first century Christians believed that Jesus was present, infused in the elements of bread and wine; that this food and drink is more than mere memorial, but the living Christ himself. The text itself does not contain the words salvation, faith, sacrament, eucharist, or church. This is, perhaps most dramatically in the Gospels, language that confounds and unsettles any attempt to easily and neatly fit it into an existing box. It is fine to seek to understand scripture through other voices in scripture. It is more problematic to leap to a conclusion that conveniently fits my theological lens.

Certainty, while tempting and marketable, is not what we most deeply desire. The poet is right to name the nature of our souls – longing for life, real life, but often settling for the safe and comfortable. The buried life that calls through the noise is meaning – something far more valuable than mere certainty. Meaning derives from an abiding, eating and drinking relationship with God, based on risk and commitment. It infuses theology with wonder and knows when mind must give way to mystery. What God in Christ offers is not certainty, but a person, a relationship; not rules and a formula, but security through risking all; not safety, but unity and community.

Our response, in the end, is to come back to the essence of the human response to the divine lover; to receive the gift offered, in the myriad of ways it is offered, open to ways that gifts gets digested from grace into love.

The Holy Eucharist of which we will partake today is a gift of life - the meaning-bearing energy of spirit beyond mere physical existence that is continuously being given and being received without loss or beginning or end. It is the most powerful enactment of the eating and drinking of which Jesus speaks. Eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ points to the deepest meaning and mystery in the sacrament, not so that we may reduce the presence of Christ to the certainty of our hands, but so that we may become in all of life that which we eat and drink. Amen.

Trinity Sunday - Year B: May 27, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br.  Aidan Owen, OHC

Trinity Sunday- Sunday, May 27, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Love.


Today, the feast of the Holy Trinity, is a celebration of the overflowing love at the heart of all life, of the love that is itself life and is, at the same time, the engine and fuel of life.

Over the last few weeks, during Ascensiontide and on Pentecost, we heard those exquisite passages from John’s gospel in which Jesus tells his disciples of the intimacy he shares with the Father, an intimacy the Spirit will draw them and us into. It is an intimacy so tender that it’s almost painful.

All that the Father has is mine, he says. And when the Spirit comes, she will give all that I have to you.
 
It is of this intimacy, the indwelling of one with another, that Paul writes when he says that “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.”
 
It isn’t that we weren’t the children of God before Christ came. But if we are made new in Christ, then we possess everything of God. Take that in for a moment.
 
All that the Father has is mine, and in the Spirit, all that I have is yours. May they be one, Father, as you and I are one.
 
The Father pours herself into the Son, who again pours herself into the Spirit, who again pours herself into you and me and the River and the trees. One in another.
 
This self-emptying love of one for another neither overwhelms nor subsumes our identity. No, this self-emptying love completes our identity. Confirms it.
 
When we surrender to this love, flowing into and through our lives, we become more fully who we are, not less. More distinctly ourselves, at the same time that we become more transparent.
 
In November I was ordained a deacon. As many of you know, I’m somewhat skeptical by nature, and I don’t have a very high clericalism. I honestly didn’t believe that I would be different after that liturgy. But I was wrong.
 
I knelt before the bishop as the assembly sang the ancient hymn to the Holy Spirit: “O Come Creator Spirit Come, and make within our hearts your home. Come to create, renew, inspire…”
 
I found that I couldn’t sing the words of the hymn. I was too overcome with emotion, and I began to cry as intensely as I ever have. By the third or fourth verse, I had dropped down below the emotion, into a place of utter stillness and peace.
 
As the bishop laid his hands on my head and prayed for God to make me a deacon in her church, I had the strongest sense that I was being given back a piece of myself I hadn’t known was missing. And, at the same time, that I was being given as a gift to the church and the world. Not that my ministry was being given, but that I, the substance of me, all of me was being given as a gift.
 
This is how love works in and through us. In God’s mercy, we are completed and filled, given first to ourselves as pure gift, and then poured out as a balm for the world.
 
The comingling of gift and self-offering, of fullness and emptiness, is the flow at the heart of divine love. It is how God first created all that is—by pouring out her substance into matter—“the prodigal, squandering herself” to paraphrase Karl Rahner. It is how Jesus redeemed the world, first being given the gift of himself at his baptism, and then consenting to the pouring out of his life in love on the Cross. And it is how the Spirit makes us children of God—by first returning us to ourselves and then enabling us to empty the Self of selves in service to the world.
 
Bruno Barnhart and Carl Jung both believed that three was an incomplete number and that it would be more accurate to speak of the Holy Quaternity than the Holy Trinity. The Godhead, three in one and one in three, is not complete without the Fourth: you and me.
 
The love that flows from and is God is not quite whole without us. And here’s the rub. This invitation to the heart of love terrifies us. What would it mean to consent to full and total immersion in the heart of love? Who would we become? What would it mean for there truly to be no separation between us and God? Fully heirs with Christ to everything that belongs to the Father, which is to say, to absolutely everything.
 
We are like the narrator of George Herbert’s great poem:
 

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back Guilty of dust and sin.But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in,Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:Love said, You shall be he.I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,I cannot look on thee.Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shameGo where it doth deserve.And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?My dear, then I will serve.You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:So I did sit and eat.
(George Herbert, “Love III”)

 
The table is laid, every moment the feast of Love calls to us. Fearful, skeptical, tired as we often are, if are ever to be whole, we must sit down and taste Love’s meat. We must sit and eat.
 
 

Day of Pentecost - Year B: May 20, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Borden, OHC

Day of Pentecost- Sunday, May 20, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Scott Borden, OHC 

This Day of Pentecost is such a show stopper - with its Tongues of Fire and its speaking in tongues... its mighty wind... and the promise of "another advocate" - which seems strangely stiff in the midst of the swirl of other images... Who can get all that excited about another Lawyer...

Of all the principal feasts in the church year, Pentecost is near the top of my list. Sure, I love Christmas... and yes Easter is great... All Saints Day... I'll give you Epiphany... But Pentecost is right up there... easily ahead of Ascension and Trinity... For in this feast that third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, gets the bulk of the attention.

One of my favorite pastimes to prepare for sermons is to see what The Rt. Rev. Mr. Google has to say. And, as you might guess, the answer is plenty. But as with all things Google, you have to add a fair amount of salt to everything.

One helpful site was able to give me a selection of sermons by denominational category. There were 5 Roman Catholic sermons, 3 Anglican sermons, 32 Church of God sermons, and a whopping 98 Baptist sermons (I'm guessing mostly Southern, but it was not specified).

Well what self-respecting Meyers Briggs ST could resist such an attractive nuisance... Not me.

As I was hoping, there was a pattern. All 5 of the Roman Catholic sermons began with a nod to the day being the birthday of the church. All 3 Anglican sermons seemed to have nothing in common with each other... but they were very tasteful. I mostly avoided the Church of God sermons. And the Baptist trove all seemed highly interested in the various gifts of the Spirit.

OK – so I did delve into one of the Church of God sermons... It started out with the observation that the Book of Acts up to the point we heard about today is much like the Genesis books... Genesis tells the story of creation until sin rears its ugly head. And Acts tells the story of the formative church until Apostacy strikes... I clicked away after that.

Google did not seem to be brining to me the Spirit of Wisdom...

The notion of Pentecost as the birthday of the church is certainly venerable. I've even heard of a practice in some congregations of singing "Happy Birthday" to The Church – a practice I would have to describe as a crime against liturgy...

If by "the church" we all understand that it refers to the gathering of people and not so much to the institutions and hierarchy, I'd more enthusiastic, though singing "Happy Birthday" would still be a crime... But I suspect that for many, including many leading the singing, the institution is exactly what is meant.

Across the street at the "washed in the blood Pentecostal holiness church" the focus is not so much on birthdays as on ecstatic prayer. Over the years I've had the honor of being present for a number of ecstatic prayer services – I've even sung in a gospel quartet that fueled some of the ecstasy. I have far more respect for that style of worship after having been in the middle of it – but I'm also quite certain that is not the language of worship for me.

So, what can I make of Pentecost if I am neither comfortably Pentecostal nor willingly traditional? All this speaking in tongues is intriguing, but also, for me, profoundly uncomfortable. And yes, I have been involved in worship services where folks all around me were verbalizing extatically in some unknown tongue.

Curiously, the Lectionary gives us an alternative today to reading the story of Pentecost from the book of Acts – which would seem like having an option on Easter of not reading the story of Jesus rising... but there you have it.

We could have read from Ezekiel – the story of the valley of dry bones to be exact. This is one of the greatest illustrations of a mystical vision – of the action of the Spirit – a vision in which Ezekiel sees a monstrous collection of dead bones take on sinew and flesh and draw breath. Its relevance to a day when the Spirit is so prominent is profound. For breath, pneuma, is Spirit. The ancient languages use the same word for breath and for spirit. These bones come to life and take in the Holy Spirit when they take in breath. It is another view of the action of Pentecost.

Most of us who hang around monasteries and pray a lot have experiences now and then of messages coming through from some spiritual source... they are, to a greater or lesser degree, mystical in-breakings or encounters with Spirit. If you have them enough and on a fairly grand scale, then you can be called a Mystic. On this Day of Pentecost when we remember this gigantic mystical/spiritual in-breaking, it's worth remembering a bit of our mystical heritage.

The religious tradition is more littered with mystics of one sort or another than we sometimes think. Some argue that Ignatius of Loyal and Martin of Luther had one common trait – they were mystics. England, and it is not obvious why, has contributed more than its fair share of mystics, though the Church of England is, by and large, a staid and highly intellectual, or just plain drowsy, institution. Yet it has produced luminaries like William Blake, Evelyn Underhill, and John and Charles Wesley to name a few. The Wesley's are described as having triggered the great awakening in the Church of England that leads in a fairly direct line to the Pentecostal movement in the US.

In the US, our mystical tradition spans centuries. The Quakers and the Shakers have deep mystical roots. Jonathan Edwards was a great leader and mystic within the New England Congregational movement. Martin Luther King Jr was a deeply mystical presence. When he told us he'd seen the place where all God's children could play together, I don't think that was just incredibly beautiful prose, I think it was an honest retelling of a mystical experience.

All of that is to justify my own little experience preparing for this sermon. I was pondering what to make of all that speaking in tongues and such. I was focused on talking and communicating and languages and that sort of thing. And then I heard in my mind a voice that said "It's not about speaking. It's about listening."

It's great for the Apostles that they get to speak in, apparently, every language in the known world. But the miracle is that everyone gets to listen. The Spirit speaks in such a way that everyone can hear. The mighty and the meek, the rich and the poor, the clean and the corrupt, people of the right race and people of the wrong race... everyone gets to listen.

Surely the Spirit, not bound in any way to time or place, speaks to us today in a way that we can listen – in a way that is tuned perfectly to each and every one of us. But we tend to want to talk rather than to listen.

In the Gospel reading today Jesus laments that he has much to say to the disciples, but that they cannot bear to hear it – they cannot bear to listen... But not to worry – the Spirit of Truth will come and lead us into all truth.

That is our journey. We still cannot bear to hear all that God has to say, but bit by bit we are being led by the Spirit in the direction of truth – of true knowledge of God's love. But we cannot know God's love without sharing God's love.

Kenneth Boulding, one of my favorite economists – who also happened to be a devout Quaker and mystical poet – says in a sonnet:

We know not how that day is to be born

whether in tongues of fire and wings of flame

as once at Pentecost the Spirit came

or whether imperceptibly as dawn.

But as the seed must grow into a tree,

so life is love, and love the end must be."

It strikes me that for most of my life I have thought of Pentecost as a day for speaking. But the story from Acts is as much about listening as speaking... about drawing breath – spirit...

So in the Spirit of Pentecost think of nothing to say. Just breath. Come Holy Spirit.

Seventh Sunday of Easter- Year B: May 13, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC

Seventh Sunday of Easter- Sunday, May 13, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Robert Sevensky  

During our contemplative days this past week I read a marvelous little book by an Orthodox bishop, Seraphim Sigrist, titled: A Life Together. [Paraclete Press, 2011]. It is an examination of the concept of sobornost, a virtually untranslatable Russian word pointing to the experience of unity, community and coinherence. It reminded me of the equally untranslatable African term ubuntu, which, in the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, expresses the reality: “I am because we are.”

I found particularly exciting Bp. Seraphim's reference to the passage of St. John's Gospel, Chapter 16,  that we heard at today's Eucharist.  It is a portion of Jesus' Farewell Prayer for himself and his disciples placed immediately before his betrayal and death. 

Indeed, the whole set of chapters in John's Gospel beginning at Chapter 13 and known as Jesus' “farewell discourse” has long fascinated me, and if I had to spend my time on a desert island with only a few pages of Scripture, these chapters would be among the few I would choose.  I love the noble language and the complex imagery. I love the transcendent feel of them. I love the pathos and the longing and the hope and the deep unity that they express.

But the thing is, I don't think I understand them in the least.  I feel like the disciples who, in the middle of the discourse in Chapter 16 say, “We do not know what he is talking about.”  So at least I'm in good company.

Bp. Seraphim sees in these lofty words prayed by Jesus an expression of sobornost, that profound unity of all believers and indeed of all creation. And he goes on to describe these words, this prayer, as the completion of the initiation of Jesus' apostles and all “those who believe through their word.”  Which is to say, the initiation of us all (p. 43).

Initiation rituals are present, of course, in every human society.  They generally mark and effect the passage from one stage of life to another, most dramatically in the passage from childhood to adulthood, from partial membership to full belonging, from virginity to fertility.  They are generally
characterized by social isolation, physical and emotional challenges, and by secret knowledge or power passed down to the initiate who is then expected to take up a new role in the community or tribe.

Bp. Seraphim points out two distinct characteristics of Jesus' initiation of the apostles and of us as given us in John's gospel.  First, the initiation is given not to an individual but to a whole group, precisely because the mystery into which they (and we) are being initiated is that of community itself, and specifically the church as the image and foretaste of a redeemed and reconciled humanity.  Jesus introduces this at the outset by washing the disciples' feet and showing, through symbolic action as much by words, that it is in mutual, even sacrificial, service that we find the beating heart of a new life.

And secondly, Jesus' initiation of his friends is not primarily by means of or in service of power or  knowledge, important as these might be.  Rather it is an initiation into love and for love, as we have been hearing so often these past weeks.  Jesus prays that God's love may be in us and he in us and we in him.  And in today's passage, Jesus prays for his disciples: “protect them from the evil one, protect them in your name...that they may all be one.”

Jesus still prays that for us, whispering in the Father's ear the deepest desires of our human hearts and minds, desires, and longings that we, by and large, have yet to recognize or name in ourselves, either individually or corporately.  Jesus whispers them so that God may protect and purify and deepen them and at last reveal them to us.  This is what the glorified Jesus does.  This is the work of our ascended Lord.

Which is why I love Ascensiontide.  Far from being a useless metaphor held captive by an archaic and outmoded triple-Decker view of the universe, the Ascension speaks to us of the ultimate fruits of Christ's Resurrection:  our human nature and the whole created order raised up close, close to the heart of God, never again to be separated from Divinity.  We have there the One who pleads for us, speaks to us, and works with us through his promised Spirit right now, today...urging us onward to take the next right step. Directing us in ways large and small.  And surprising us daily.

Bp. Seraphim concludes his consideration of sobornost, of Christian community and coinherence, by likening it to Indra's net. Admittedly I know next to nothing about Indra or his net.  He is an Indian deity who story has many layers and a complex history and various levels of meaning.  So let me quote the good bishop:

“...in the wonderful net of that old Indian god, there is a gem at each intersection and in each gem the reflection of every other.”

This image of the fishing net made of gems bound together by lines of mutual reflection has enjoyed a certain popularity in the last 40 years or so in the new physics or cosmology as a symbol of the intimate and eternal inter-relationship and mutual dependency of all things: people, planet, cosmos, everything.  As such it is a rich and tantalizing visual.  I am put in mind of Thomas Merton's vision that we are each of us points of light shining like the sun and reflecting all others in that web that constitutes the Real.

But, according to Bp. Seraphim,

“...we see in John 17 that the lines that join the gems of Indra's net are not merely lines of mutual reflection but rather lines of love by which each sustains and creates each in the diagram of the Glory (to use John's word here for “Spirit”), and all are created, sustained, and completed in one.”  (pp. 45-46)

Imagine that:  a universe in the truest sense of the term...cosmic unity in diversity, complexity interrelated and codependent...created and connected and nurtured and sustained:

in love 

by love

for love.

To echo Br. Aidan's Easter sermon:  Now that's an Ascension worth celebrating. 
So, brothers and sisters, let us keep the feast.

"And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit be ascribed as is most justly due, all might, majesty, power and dominion, world without end."

Ascension Day- Year B: May 10, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bob Pierson, OHC

Ascension Day, Year B- Thursday, May 10, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Bob Pierson, OHC 

The Feast of the Ascension reminds me of a discussion we had as seminarians back in the early 80's about the most appropriate song for this celebration.  Should it be “Leavin' on a Jet Plane,” or “Up, up and away in my beautiful balloon?”  Of course, we were joking, but even in our humor we were naming a common belief about the meaning of the Ascension.  

It's about Jesus leaving earth to return to the Father.  St. Leo the Great puts it this way:  “we are commemorating the day on which our poor human nature was carried up, in Christ, above all the hosts of heaven, above all the ranks of angels, beyond the highest heavenly powers to the very throne of God the Father.”  That makes it sound like Jesus has gone far, far away.

The problem with that, though, it that we believe Jesus Christ is still with us.  He who was called “Emmanuel”--God with us—is with us now in an even more intimate way than he was when he lived on the earth, through the power of his life-giving Spirit.  Again, St. Leo the Great says that “our Redeemer's visible presence has passed into the sacraments.”  And in our baptism, we became members of the Body of Christ, and that Body is present all over the world and continues to act as Christ to heal the sick and preach the good news to the poor, to set captives free and to bring the dead to life.  In a real way, Christ is more present today to many more people than Jesus of Nazareth could ever have been in First Century Palestine.

But in order for that to happen, the followers of Jesus had to let go of him as they knew him.  Like Mary Magdalene in the garden on Easter day, they could not cling to him.  He needed to go in order to return in a more powerful way, and today's Scripture readings underline that fact.

In the Acts of the Apostles, the “two men in white robes” remind the disciples that “this Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”  Jesus is not gone forever, and when the Spirit comes the disciples become the witnesses of Christ's power among them.  They become “the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all,” as the letter to the Ephesians reminds us.

So what does all of this have to do with us?  Like the first disciples, we too are called to be witnesses.  Jesus is speaking to us, too, when he says “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and  you will be my witnesses...to the ends of the earth.”  And like those first disciples, we are called to let go and not cling to our old ways of knowing Jesus Christ so that we can recognize him anew in our lives today—here and now.  He continues to come to us in new and powerful ways—and if we open our minds and hearts, we will be given the eyes to see his presence among us.

In the meantime, we wait, and like the disciples, we worship him and bless God for the gifts God bestows on us continually.  And we know that he is with us always—until the end of the age.  How do we reconcile that with the transcendent notion of Jesus at the right hand of the Father?  Perhaps, Jesus is both at the right hand of the Father and with us always, which would put us very close to the Father as well.  Perhaps as we sing God's praise here on earth, we are one with the heavenly choirs of angels and archangels, all of us singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”  Perhaps our humanity, in Christ, has been exalted to the right hand of God as well.  Now that's something to celebrate!!!