Sunday, August 26, 2018

Proper 16, Year B: Sunday, August 26, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josép R. Martínez-Cubero, OHC
Proper 16- Sunday, August 26, 2018


To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Josép Martínez-Cubero, OHC 
During the last few Sundays the gospel readings have all come from the sixth chapter of John, which concerns Jesus’ Discourse on the Bread of Life. John’s Gospel combines two ways in which the author has Jesus relate this teaching. This first is based on a passage from the Apocryphal book The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach:

“Come to me, you who desire me, and eat your fill of my fruits. For the memory of me is sweeter than honey, and the possession of me sweeter than the honeycomb. Those who eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for more.”(NRSV) 

So in the light of the gospel passage, this wisdom teaching tells us that those who come to know Jesus will never have too much wisdom and will always desire more, and they will never hunger or thirst for anything other than Jesus’ revelation and teaching, referred to in the gospel as the Bread of Life. This means that he is the revealer of the truth, the divine teacher who has come to nourish people with wisdom. In claiming to personify divine revelation, Jesus says that those who believe in him shall never be hungry or thirsty. With these metaphors of bread, water, and life, Jesus reveals a reality which once possessed, makes one understand physical hunger, thirst, and death as insignificant.
 
The second way in which the author of John’s gospel has Jesus relate his teaching concerns the Eucharist as it was promoted and practiced within the Johannine community. Jesus promises eternal life to those who eat his flesh and drink his blood. Eternal life is the fourth gospel's way of speaking about what the synoptic gospels call the "Kingdom of God." It is presented in both, the present tense and the future tense. Eternal life is both present now, and a promise for the future. The Greek word used for "life" is not about physical life, although physical life certainly flows from it, but is connected to the very source of all life, the Life Principle itself. For the author of John’s gospel, through the Eucharist, our consciousness is expanded beyond the earthy and the physical toward the true source of all life.
 
When the disciples heard him, their reaction was: “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” There are different opinions as to what it was that the disciples found difficult to accept. Some say it was Jesus’ claim to have come down from heaven. And then, there is the whole business of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. I have pondered about who I would have been in that particular instance among Jesus’ disciples. And I can think of my righteous indignation flaring up, taking Jesus aside, or perhaps waiting until an appropriate moment to tell him: “Jesus, I support you, and I want to cooperate, but I really think you need to find a better way of relating whatever it is you are trying to tell us, in a way that it can be heard.” As wrong as it may sound, sometimes it's easier for me to identify with the crowds who misunderstood and questioned Jesus. It’s tempting to write off those who gave up on Jesus as people too stupid or unfaithful to believe. But note that the author of John’s gospel calls these people not simply "the crowds," as in earlier passages, but "disciples." They had been following him and trying to figure out what he was talking about, and they just couldn’t get it.
 
It’s tempting to think that the disciples who stayed with Jesus were the ones who understood who he was, so they stayed with him because of their deep understanding whereas those who walked away didn’t have that depth of understanding. Well, that’s just not true… The disciples who stayed with Jesus had no deeper understanding about him than anyone else. Time and time again we read in the gospels that the disciples didn’t understand what Jesus was talking about half of the time. They misinterpreted his parables or were completely puzzled by them. They didn’t get why he was healing people, and they tried to prevent him from going to Jerusalem where he would be crucified, so it’s not as if they understood what he was going to achieve by dying on the cross.
 
Peter says: “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Where did Peter and the other eleven get their faith? What makes them different from all those who gave up on Jesus and went away? It is clear from all four gospels that the twelve were also plagued by doubt and fear. They suffered at times from an overabundance of pride or a lack of courage. They, too, eventually deserted Jesus at the very time he needed them the most. So, what is it that sets them apart?
 
“Lord to whom can we go?” Peter’s admission of having no alternative becomes an expression of faith and commitment. These young people, the twelve, went all in. Part of going all in is letting go of the idolatry of security, and taking your foot out of whatever other doors you’ve been trying to keep open. So here they are. In John’s Gospel, this is how the twelve immerge. Some of the disenchanted go away. The twelve go deeper into their commitment, their curiosity, their struggle, and their faith. And it was that faith and commitment that completely change the course of humanity. Later on in this gospel, Jesus will say that whenever he is lifted up he will draw all people to himself. The twelve having come into being, Jesus then prepares to go once again to Jerusalem. There, in time, he will be the seed that goes into the ground that becomes the grain that is made into bread that we being gathered together in unity by the Holy Spirit eat in continual remembrance that Jesus gave himself fully in love, that we may have life, and have it abundantly. Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo. ~Amen+
 

References:

  1. Ravi Ravindra, The Gospel of John in the Light of Indian Mysticism (Inner Traditions, 2004)
  2. Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (Doubleday, 1997)
  3. Br. Roy Parker, OHC, Sermon for Proper 16, Year B- Holy Cross Monastery, August 26, 2012


 

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

The Feast of The Transfiguration: August 7, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
The Feast of The Transfiguration - Tuesday,  August 7, 2018


To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.


Br. Randy Greve, OHC 

A couple of Fridays ago our Chapter Talk focused on the section of the Rule of the Order on the importance of study. The Founder notes that the telos of the study of theology is not to know theology, but to know God. 

Behind such a statement is an awareness of the temptation to amass information, degrees (and for that matter titles, positions, possessions, and power) for our own ego’s sake alone and forget what the whole thing is about. The study of theology has a soul-forming purpose to be kept in mind with every turn of a page if we are not to fall into pride. Pondering the person and acts of God drives us to our knees, not to the ambition of our own agendas.

But what does “know God” mean in our study of the account of the transfiguration? Is the mount the realm of intellectual investigation and reasoned thought? What happens when we come to an event that is not easily defined within the containers of defined faith? Knowing God must be more than the accumulation of learned discourses. An authentic knowing is open to language that also includes silence, understanding with mystery, the safe remove of images which prepares us for a more direct encounter.

This is the gospel paradox when it comes to knowing God. Christ has been revealed and made known to us in the grace of the incarnation; all of Christ’s life calls with the invitation, “come and know me.”  Yet our knowledge is still finite and boundaried around the otherness of God. Just when we have finally intellectually nailed it down, we are in trouble. Knowing on our knees is powerful, because when we stand up and begin to claim absolutes, declare with great zeal and confidence the how and what are who of our knowing, our knowing is no longer about God, but us. Wisdom is in knowing ourselves to be forever beginners in the face of Ultimate Mystery, our best and most beautiful language being feeble metaphors and hints.

We come to the transfiguration most especially on our theological knees. Imagine you are walking around in Palestine at this time and bump into Peter, James, and John on their way down the mount of transfiguration, see that they are a bit frazzled and dazed, and ask them what happened. They report, against Jesus’ command to tell no one and with bated breath and wide eyes, “well, we saw Jesus turn a blinding white, we saw Moses and Elijah, Peter babbled something about building a shrine to the experience, we were enveloped in a cloud and could not tell left from right, up from down, we heard God’s voice. We.. it’s.. I...
“Yes”, you reply excitedly, “so now you know God?”

Spiritual growth is popularly marketed as moving from fear to faith, from confusion to clarity, from mystery to understanding. Our built-in aversion to what does not feel good, make sense, or have definition means that we can label whatever is disorienting as a problem and go about fixing it. On the mount, however, these categories are shattered as a deeper reality and knowing is unveiled into the lives of the disciples.

The whole experience is about being disoriented, overwhelmed, and left with a mixture of terror and confusion. Such is a picture of the life of discipleship. At times Jesus calmly explains, tenderly touches, patiently guides. At other times this same Jesus explodes into light, bursts the heavens open, and shakes the very cosmos, including our tightly grasped images and plans. At those times the best response is to gaze in awe and wonder, to realize that though we are small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, we are treasured and precious. The glory we are made to reflect, desire to see, is also that which terrifies us and leaves us speechless. Our openness to the magnitude and beauty of the vision of God is itself loving God.

Real knowing is being freed from the safe idols of my expectation in order to be available to unmediated and terrifying glory. Rather than build a dwelling, Jesus is forming them to be the dwellings of the divine life. Jesus is beyond the shelter, beyond the image, beyond the knowing, constantly slipping out of our grasp, eluding our definition.

Peter, John, and James do know God in the transfiguration. Their vision of Christ in his unveiled and glorified state is a knowing that is both real and beyond words, beyond grasping. They were humbled back into the first rule of theology, – there is a God and you are not God. They realized that God’s call was to worship a person, not commemorate a place; to marvel at the miracle of Christ transcending time and space, life and death, without needing to enshrine the ineffable.

The last thing to do after such an event is to attempt to systematize it, classify it, or analyze it. The living reality of transfiguration unveils its mystery in its own way, continues to reverberate and build courage and faithfulness. Kneeling is a posture which can seem like weakness or passivity, and if misunderstood can become just another pious mask of avoidance. Yet in the presence of the glory of Christ it is the posture of receptivity, vulnerability.  By God’s grace we are becoming what we have seen, we are invited to look with wonder, and to remember that growth in the knowledge of God is knowing less than we thought we did and more than we could ever imagine. Amen.