Friday, June 29, 2018

The Feast of St. Peter & St. Paul: June 29, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
The Feast of St. Peter & St. Paul - Friday,  June 29, 2018


To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.



Br. Randy Greve, OHC
It’s 64 AD in Rome.  Nero is the Emperor.  A fire breaks out which burns for six days, destroying a third of the city.  Someone must pay.  Christians are blamed for starting the fire, thus giving Nero, who was looking for an excuse to begin a persecution, the pretext he needed.  The Jesus-followers were widely rounded-up and many executed in the public circuses.  Both Peter and Paul were in Rome at this time and were among in the masses of arrests and martyrdoms and both died among their brothers and sisters.

This is the theory, anyway, of their ends, although there is no historically verified account.  Although John the Evangelist makes a passing reference to Peter’s death in the gospel reading, the silence of the New Testament as to the details of their deaths may indicate that, in the chaos of the persecution, no one was a witness and therefore no one could attest as to the actual event, so it was left out. Early tradition places the site of their deaths at what is now St. Peter’s Basilica, and some recent archeological exploration appears to lend authority to this claim.

The accounts we do have are two stories of two remarkable men:


Simon, later “the rock” is the earthy, hotheaded, impulsive fisherman on the Sea of Galilee.  "Come, follow me" are the words that change a life bound for common obscurity into one that changes the world.  At a moment of great testing, he fails and denies Christ, yet by the day of Pentecost preaches a sermon that sets the new Jesus movement into its mission.  His great insight is that what God calls clean he must not call profane, in other words that Jesus has fulfilled the law, has inaugurated a new way of freedom.  In the face of persecution and confusion, he becomes a nonviolent resister to the power of fear.  His life belongs to the one who has the power over death.  In the letters attributed to Peter, the author points to the example of Christ who, “when he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2:23)
 
Saul, later Paul, the educated, zealous, theologically brilliant Pharisee, upholder of the letter of the law, persecutor of Christians, this new blasphemous sect, knocked down and blinded by a vision of the One he has been persecuting; a few years of study follow, and then he is off across the Mediterranean, writing a third of the New Testament along the way.  His great insight is that truth without grace is no truth at all.  Paul became a nonviolent resister of the power of legalism, the false belief in our own capacity to save ourselves and a champion of the grace of God as pure gift.  For Paul, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against cosmic forces of evil.  The resistance takes on a new aim, “do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21).

They met at least once, these two, but because they were so different, probably did not like each other.  They realized that they had distinct callings and went in different directions!  Yet there are common threads in their stories.  Each had been called by Jesus but also questioned by him.Peter with Jesus on the beach, after the resurrection - "Do you love me? Paul in a vision of the glorified Christ - "Why are you persecuting me? The rest of their lives is an answer to these questions.
 
Jesus is speaking to the most painful moments in their lives.  I call them nonviolent resisters, because they had both been violent men.  Peter’s anger most dramatically seen in his cutting off the ear of the servant of the high priest in the Garden of Gethsemane as Jesus is being arrested.  Paul’s mission to eradicate the new teaching that Jesus is Lord through his possibly direct or at least approved persecution, sometimes execution, of Christians told in his condoning of the stoning of the deacon Stephen, the first martyr.  They both had deep emotional upheavals and had come into a profound encounter with their own acts of evil.  And when the temptation would have been to wallow in guilt or self-pity or lash out at reminders of their failures, they chose the path offered them by Christ of forgiveness.  They may at one time have boasted in their arrogance, but no longer.  They realized that in their weakness was their greatest strength, in their own awareness of their reception of and need for mercy and forgiveness was the authority for ministry. 
 
Their conversions and ministries are about the movement from violence to nonviolence.  They knew firsthand the destructive power of violence. It is tempting, but a dangerous delusion.  It leads only to more suffering.  The way of Jesus was the way of real power.  This nonviolence is not docility or passivity in the face of conflict or crises; far from it.  Nonviolent resistance is resistance.  It is the resistance of evil itself, not simply the evil person.  It is about truth, the heart; about relationship.  This gospel way of being does not ignore, but transcends labels, alliances, and identities which the culture says make people enemies.  The gospel says these differences invite us to the challenging work of compassion and care.  Peter and Paul came to live in a way that they knew that their witness was precisely in and through their imperfection.  Their past failures did not define them, but became points of healing into humility.  God used their raw, unformed and distorted passion and converted it into the service of good, of peace.  True freedom was found in a greater vision, a grander purpose than attack and fear. 
 
Peter and Paul faced seemingly impossible challenges; from persecution outside the church to division within it. For us, over the last few years the cultural and theological rifts in this country have been widening. While there is progress as old accepted patterns of prejudice and power are being called out and an awareness of previously secreted forms of abuse are being exposed, debate and dialogue across political and cultural differences is as angry as ever.  Some Christian voices are calling for us to go on with business as usual and focus solely on spiritual things, relegate religion strictly to the soul.  Others want to make the church into an agent of advocacy for their own agendas and rally people against a common enemy with God on their side.  Are these the only choices?  Is it possible to be Christian without colluding with the empire or burying our heads in the sands of isolation? The sources, the sacred texts and the lives that created them speak afresh to these questions. What we need is all there in the texts.  We can recover a theology and practice of faithful witness that makes respect possible if we recognize the gift that God offers of a justice without judgmentalism, a mercy without manipulation, and a grace that is free, but not cheap.  It is one thing to say we will respect the dignity of every human being.


Then when a particularly undignified human being tests our theology, we get to see what is really in our hearts.  If we watch and read Peter and Paul seriously and carefully, we will discover that it is possible to stand for justice and peace and against oppression for all people without doing verbal or social violence to anyone and while pointing to the source and aim of true unity and peace.  But this respectful, evil-resisting way can only come when we are aware of our own tendencies toward arrogance and defensiveness, toward the impulses of division and blame within us.  The greatest witness to spiritual maturity is not the skill with which I hit back at my perceived enemies, but my commitment to witness to a way of peace that sees the one I label “other” as one for whom Christ also died and was raised.

Peter and Paul would be the first to tell us that their service is not first about their great skill, their excellent administrative abilities or advanced theological training.  Though they evangelized, preached, and pastored the people God entrusted to them, they were great apostles and servants because they knew who they were.  The greatest gift we can give a family, community, church, and world is the grounding and gratitude we have in our true identity.  We are forgiven people.  We are people who have received God’s grace and mercy.  We are people who have overcome and are overcoming evil with good.  When we remember that, then we will see our brothers and sisters in Christ living before God just as we do.  In that unity we find our common heart and life, we find community. 
 
The renewal to which these saints call us is hearing Jesus’ questions to them as questions to us:
“Do you love me?”
“Why are you persecuting me?”


 Do you want to be counter-cultural? Do you want to stand up to the forces of spiritual wickedness? Then really break away from the crowd – be courageously kind.  Be honest and humble about who you are, what you believe.  Listen. Learn.  Live a love that exposes the empty powers and principalities of the world.  We conquer not by the sword but by the power of the overcoming powerlessness of love.
Amen.
 

Sunday, June 24, 2018

Proper 7 - Year B: June 24, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
Proper 7- Sunday, June 24, 2018


To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.


Br. Robert James Magliula
Beginning this Sunday and stretching over the next two weeks, Mark presents us with a collection of miracle stories intended to give us insights into God and ourselves. The bruising storm in today's Gospel is a recasting of the watery chaos from which creation is brought forth from God. 

The Gospel is juxtaposed with a reading from the Book of Job where chaos takes another form, reminding us of who God is in us and us in God. In both instances, the disciples and Job must face into the chaos as well as the feelings and questions that arise in them, and in us, as we navigate the chaos of our day.

In Mark's account Jesus' identity is still unclear to the disciples. Jesus is so exhausted from teaching the crowds that he falls soundly asleep in the boat. A windstorm is not an unusual occurrence on the Sea of Galilee. In the midst of the storm, in fear and despair, the disciples wake Jesus and accuse him of not caring whether they die.

Fear, the visceral response of people, in a frail storm-tossed boat, resonates in our individual and societal lives today. We are afraid of these winds and waves that assail our fragile vessels---our lives, our church, our government, our nation. Personally, we fear disapproval, rejection, failure, meaninglessness, illness, and death. 


In these last weeks we have been confronted by the perils and abuse of the most vulnerable among us, conjuring memories of humanity's darkest past. In our past and present we have heard our Scriptures distorted to justify and promulgate injustice and atrocity. How we long for One who can calm both us and this storm. In today's Gospel, fear is confronted not with a burst of courage or resolve on the part of the disciples. They don't pull themselves together. They don't discover inner resources they didn't know they had. Rather, it is Jesus who calms both them and the storm with the power of his presence. Not surprisingly, their immediate response to Jesus' demonstration of power is not relief, but more fear. They witness Jesus revealing the paradox that human and divine are not separate, but one. It is beyond their comprehension.

Jesus never says to them or us that there is nothing to be afraid of. Jesus asks, "Why are you afraid?" Fearsome things are real, but they do not have the last word. Unless we give it, they do not have ultimate power over us, because reigning over this world of fearsome things is a God who is mightier than they. God's self-revelation to Moses at the Exodus denotes one who hears the cry of the oppressed. The name YHWH is inextricably tied to a God who redeems people in trouble, sustains them through the wilderness, and brings them into the promised land. God acts through history in fulfillment of promises made in relationship. It is not possible to talk of a God "out there" who is sovereign over the universe without relating to the God who enters the fray of history and politics, investing in us and expecting loyalty in return.


Time and again in Scripture the word is "Do not be afraid." The angels speak it to the terrified shepherds and it is spoken at the tomb when the women discover it empty. Not because there are no fearsome things on the sea of our days, but rather because God is with us, in us. Even though there are real and fearsome things. Evil need not paralyze us; lies need not have dominion over us; they need not own us, because we are not alone in the boat. To be sure our ego is challenged. Only when we have articulated our feelings of frustration and fear---and the anger beneath them---can we listen for a word from God. Only then can we hear, "Peace! Be still." God's word still destroys the forces that threaten to do harm. The question Jesus poses is asked of us when we are tempted to despair. 


"Why are you afraid?" Are we afraid to bear the burden of divinity in our humanity? If we truly acknowledged the image of God in which everyone without exception is created, if we recognize the Spirit of God within us, we would have to live up to this incredible dignity, freedom, and love. So many carry an unspoken assumption that we are damaged, guilty, and unlovable. Jack Kornfield writes:

"Our belief in a limited and impoverished identity is such a strong habit that without it we are afraid we wouldn't know how to be. If we fully acknowledged our dignity, it could lead to radical life changes. It could ask something huge of us."1
Stepping into our divinity is the ultimate paradigm shift.

Job holds up a mirror for us. When chaos comes knocking at his door, his framework for understanding life is shattered. He believed that those who lived a good life were rewarded with good fortune, health, wealth, and blessings. Those who sinned met misfortune, illness, poverty, and woes. This legalistic moral framework, so ingrained in the human psyche as a way to create the illusion that one can keep chaos at bay, focuses on right and wrong, and is considered the essence of justice. People get what they deserve. They reap what they sow. Job knows he has done no wrong but still he suffers. All he can perceive in his situation is injustice. He is desperate for his idea of justice to prevail. He demands to know "Why?" When faced with chaos his question is also ours. The chaos of our day offers an invitation to examine our own framework for organizing the unimaginable---to name the doubts and fears we only whisper in the dark on sleepless nights.


God responds out of the whirlwind as a poet. In a fierce and poetic litany, God describes the works of creation spanning the whole universe. It's a response that we need to take in this morning. Barbara Brown Taylor hits the nail on the head when she writes:


"Job's question was about justice. God's answer is about omnipotence, and as far as I know, that is the only answer human beings have ever gotten about why things happen the way they do. God only knows. And none of us is God." 2

God does not correct Job but dazzles him with the divine glory. We cannot always bring explanation to confusion, we cannot always arrange the rooms of our lives the way we want them. In chaos our hearts shout down our rational selves, and we, like Job, cry out to God.

We do not enjoy puzzling over mysteries we cannot explain easily. But that is what the Church does at its best. It summons mysteries that are not easily explained, it invites people into them, never in control of where those mysteries will lead, or what will happen to those caught up in them. The Church introduces people to the Living God. As our Bishop Visitor wrote recently:


"The world has never needed more the Church to be the Church, and the life of active faith and witness must be more than reflexive reaction to each new crisis." 3

Our readings today locate mystery primarily not in what is exceptional, but in what is natural and known---the stars, the sea, the clouds, the womb. They invite us with Job and the disciples to ponder the breadth and depth of this God. In this world unfurled for us in poetry, we find that our questions lead not to answers but to an awareness of how fathomless are the mysteries of God we struggle to understand. Faith, by its very nature, is not the product of right answers. The deepest places of our knowledge of God are often those places that we cannot explain.

At God's insistence Job must confront what he fears most. He faces the chaos and the cosmos, his immediate situation and the larger picture. As he does, his blinders fall off. He says, "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you" (42:5). His narrow moral framework gives way to a cosmic vision of the Divine. His question is never answered. He is comforted not by an explanation but by a vision. The chaos is still there, but so is God, and that is enough. Job is offered something more than answers: he is assured of God's Presence.

Perhaps our vocation has less to do with explaining the root of the mystery and more to do with making space for that mystery within us and others, to make it known and share it. Our role is to support each other in the midst of these encounters so that we may see God's work, and do it, not just in times of chaos, but in the regular moments of life, where God can be known but never finally explained. Then we are able to further God's Reign. +Amen.


________

1. Jack Kornfield, The Wise Heart: A Guide to the universal teachings of Buddhist Psychology (Bantam Dell: 2008), 12.

2. Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way, (Cambridge:Cowley, 1999), 165.

3.The Rt. Rev. Andrew M. L. Dietsche, Pastoral Letter, 20 June 2018.

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Proper 6 - Year B: June 17, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br.  Joseph  Wallace-Williams, OHC
Proper 6 - Sunday, June 17, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Joseph Wallace-Williams, OHC 
"Beware of the watermelons!"

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Proper 5 - Year B: June 8, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br.  Aidan Owen, OHC
Proper 5 - Sunday, June 8, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Aidan Owen
You’ll have to pardon me, but having been ordained a priest less than a week ago, I have vows on the mind. And while I don’t find it the most comforting image in scripture to describe the vowed life, today’s gospel text certainly provides us with an apt one.

“No one can plunder the strong man’s house without first binding up the strong man. Then you can plunder his house.”

It’s hard not to chafe at the idea of being bound and plundered. Boundaries, rules, and commitments limit our freedom of expression and action. Beginning with the vows we made or that were made on our behalf at baptism, we Christians agree to live in alignment with the will and desire of God made known to us scripture, the traditions of our ancestors, the revelations of our communities, and the whispering of the Spirit in our hearts. We are not free to do solely as we wish, at least not if we desire to live our lives with integrity and purpose.

And yet, binding is not primarily a term of limitation. We speak also of the bonds of fellowship and love, of the ties that unite us and draw us closer to the ones we love. One binds wounds so that torn flesh can knit itself back together.

Isaiah gives us perhaps the most beautiful image of binding, an image that Jesus picks up at his first public teaching: The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.

In his rule for the community, our Founder describes purity of heart as the goal of every Christian life. Now purity, in this context, could better be translated as “unity” of heart. The goal of the Christian life is unity of heart, which is to say, the directing of our entire being toward God: body, mind, spirit, heart—all that we are centered in love on the one who gives us life.

Most of the time, most of us are like that house divided against itself. We do, truly, wish to love God with our whole selves. And sometimes we are like the eager disciple of Benedict’s Rule, who, in a fit of love, is eager to take the narrow road of which the Lord says: Narrow is the road that leads to life. In our ardor and eagerness we make promises and commitments, we agree “no longer [to] live by [our] own judgment, giving in to [our] whims and appetites; rather [we] walk according to another’s decisions and directions.” That part of us is real and good.

And yet, the eager disciple is not alone in our house. All too soon the strong man of our own willfulness, our stubborn desire to have things our way, our self-righteous anger at others’ perceived shortcomings or our own, and our certainty about what is good and what is not, returns to dominate us and divide us from our heart’s deepest desire, which is for union with God.

Not only do these dynamics rage within us individually, but they also do so corporately.

How often have we allowed our fear of the losses of aging and financial insufficiency to lead us to the safe choice rather than the prophetic one? How often have we really turned down the volume of our certainty that we have the right answer or the right way forward to listen to the deeper stirrings of the Spirit within our own or another’s heart? Is our first question always “what new work is God calling forth from us today?” Or is it often, “what do I want and how can I get it?”

We need the commitments we have made in the flush of our eager love to hold us when the strong men of self-will, doubt, arrogance, and fear begin to dominate us. The vows we have made bind up these strong men so that they can be healed and transformed, so that their strength and energy can be directed to the building up of the body in love. And here is a paradox for us: true freedom is the freedom to surrender our entire being to the transforming movement of God’s love in and among us, and in so doing, to become conduits of that transforming love to a hurting and fractured world. When we allow ourselves to be bound up and healed, we can become the wounded healers that the world so desperately needs.

As we all know, this process is not an easy one. “Purity of heart,” the Founder writes, “is never attained without pain and suffering. [However,] such pain and suffering can be an agent of cleansing, detachment, simplification, and a humility that leads to greater and greater dependence upon God.”

He continues, “As a community dedicated to the Holy Cross, we cannot escape witnessing to this truth, namely, that it is only in and through self-sacrifice that we come to share in Christ’s victory. The image of the contemplative cleaving [we might say “bound]” in loving adoration to God amid chaos, temptation, spiritual dryness, and apparent uselessness can serve as an archetype of our lives as Christians and monastics. The key to this whole process lies in the complete surrender of our will to God as revealed in our crucified Lord. It is the essence of our vow of obedience.”

We cannot bind ourselves or the strong men that dominate and divide our house. We cannot unite ourselves individually or collectively. But we can surrender to the work of God within and among us. We can recommit ourselves to the vows we have made and to the common life in which we have made them. We can hold out our wounded, fractured hearts to the Crucified and Risen One, who binds up those hearts and make them whole. He will heal us, will bind us in and to his love. He will set us free.

Sunday, June 3, 2018

Proper 4 - Year B: June 3, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josép R. Martínez-Cubero, OHC
Proper 4 Year B- Sunday, June 3, 2018


To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

I wonder what Jesus must have said to the disciples after the encounter with the Pharisees at the grainfields? I’m thinking it may have been something like: “thanks a lot for getting me in trouble with the darn Pharisees.” You see, in my former life, I was, among other things, the director of a youth theatre. I worked with youth of all ages, including teenagers. I directed teenagers in theatrical productions- fun! I ran summer camps for teenagers- fun! I took teenagers on outings- fun! I took teenagers on hiking trips- fun! And I have been with teenagers when they are hungry- not fun! Quite a bit of whining can ensue.

It’s easy to forget that many of Jesus’ followers were very young people. It is very likely that his disciples were mostly teenagers. Who knows why they were walking on the grainfields on the Sabbath? I have read many scholarly commentaries and opinions about this Gospel lesson and have to conclude that no one really knows. But as a theatre director, when I read this Gospel lesson I fill in the blanks with a theatrical dialogue that goes sort of like this:

-“Man, I’m hungry!”-“Me too, I’m starving.”-“Hey, teacher, is it OK if we pluck some heads of grain?”-“No”, says Jesus, “It’s the Sabbath.”-“But we are starving!”-“You babies”, says one of the women.-“Are we there yet?”-“When are we going to get to eat?”-“Are you sure we can’t pluck some heads of grain?”-“Fine!” Says Jesus “Go ahead.” They begin to pluck heads of grain, and USL enter the Pharisees:-“They should have stayed home on the Sabbath.”-“Or they should have prepared their snacks yesterday.”

Our Gospel lesson this morning points to the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. To the Pharisees, the actions of the disciples on the grainfields, and of Jesus at the synagogue appear to deliberately disobey the commandment to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy (Exodus 20:8; Deuteronomy 5:12). But Jesus sees the Sabbath in a different light. He reminds the Pharisees of the story about David taking consecrated bread that was supposed to be reserved for priests (Leviticus 24:5-9). 


David was a refugee fleeing from Saul, who had clearly declared his intentions to kill him. Jesus implies that the priest broke the letter of the law concerning the bread in order to relieve David’s hunger. The priest not only sustained the life of a weary traveler, but also contributed to David living into his calling as the king anointed to replace Saul (1 Samuel 16:1-13). Jesus insists that sometimes demands of the law must be set aside in favor of meeting greater needs, especially when those greater needs promote a person’s well-being and facilitate the coming of blessings.


In the scene at the synagogue Jesus is honoring the chief objective of the mandate to preserve life, as read in the book of Deuteronomy: “ I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying and holding fast to God; for that means life to you and length of days” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). What better day than the Sabbath, a day meant to promote God’s commitment to humanity’s wellbeing, to heal a man’s damaged hand? With the healing of his hand, the man may have received back his ability to work, and to provide for his family. The event represents more than just fixing something that has gone wrong. It represents the restoration to wholeness and dignity, the promotion of life and human prosperity.

It was when those who claimed to speak for God used their position to draw rigid boundary lines of inclusion and exclusion that Jesus looked around at them with anger. The next time someone tries to tell you that a good Christian should show no anger, remind him or her of this passage. Sometimes Christians may need to get angry, when religious values become oppressive in the hands of careless stewards. Sometimes Christians may need to get angry, when what begins as a noble motive becomes perverted.

Sometimes Christians may need to get angry, when those who live in privilege turn into insensitive leaders, out of touch with, and indifferent of the needs of the vulnerable. That's the hardness of heart that moves Jesus to grief in the synagogue, and it is the hardness of heart described in the book of the prophet Isaiah: “.... these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote”. (Isaiah 29:13) In the end, on that Sabbath, the Pharisees went out and plotted how to destroy Jesus. Amazing! One must wonder how on earth they didn’t question whether that was a holy thing to do on the Sabbath?

This is not a Gospel lesson about Jesus rejecting the law, or rendering the Sabbath as unimportant. But keeping the Sabbath must always reflect God’s reign of love being worked out in the world. For Jesus love was the ground of religious and moral law. And for us, followers of Jesus, love of God and love of neighbor must always define the law. And why? Because only love can expose religious hypocrisy, only love can expose the oppressive tyrannies of fear. After all, as our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry reminded the entire world a few weeks ago, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” ~¡Que así sea! En el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo, Amen+

 
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References:
1.   Donald H. Juel, Shaping the Scriptural Imagination: Truth, Meaning, and the Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2011)
2.   Thomas Jay Ord, The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence (AVP Academic, 2015)