Easter Sunday - Sunday, April 21, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josép Reinaldo Martínez-Cubero, OHC
Easter Sunday - Sunday, April 21, 2019

Romans 6:3-11
Luke 24:1-12

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

They had hoped he would save them from the oppression of Roman domination. He had promised God’s reign of justice and peace. Now Jesus’ followers were afraid, confused, and feeling abandoned by God. They were paralyzed, and hiding in the shadows. Well, the men were paralyzed and hiding, apparently not the women!

All four gospels have unique elements in their resurrection stories.  Mark, regarded as the primary source, has only eight verses on the first Easter.  Both Matthew and Luke expand the story in their own individual directions according to their audience. And that is disconcerting to us twenty-first century humans who are so attached to facts and certainty. But the Gospels are about meaning and truth not facts.

In the case of Luke’s Gospel one of the most notable features is that it has the most women on the scene. Three are named: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, but also “the other women” were with them. Those women at the tomb are given the message of the Resurrection, and it was terrifying, but they heard it, and it made sense to them. Those women returned from the tomb, and told the apostles what they had experienced, and their words seem to the apostles an “idle tale, and they did not believe them.” The women were not heard. (And all the women in the room are probably thinking: “Ain’t that always the case!”) Those apostles were too caught up in their fears and their disillusion, not being able to reconcile Jesus’ execution with their hopes and dreams of a new world. If God could let the best of them die such a horrible death, then perhaps God was no god at all. And don’t we still ask that very thing? If God can let the horrendous sufferings, about which we all know, happen, then perhaps God is no god at all.

We want a God who will take our responsibility away from us; who will erase the messes we create for ourselves; who will save us from the times we live in, the circumstances of our lives, from ourselves. We refuse to see that in Jesus’ death, God dies.  God in, with, through and beyond us, God woman, God gay, God transgender, God black, God in prison, God raped, God the latino from a “shithole country” seeking asylum at our southern borders, God dying again and again. We forget or refuse to accept that the mystery of the Incarnation reveals that divinity is not exclusively transcendent and different from humanity. For Christians who want to grow up and take responsibility, our humanity, personal and corporate, divinized in Christ, is the instrument, and the focus of God’s salvific and liberating work.

So, here we are today, at the fundamental and nonnegotiable experience at the heart of Christian faith- the Resurrection of Jesus. As the shock slowly went away, and they came to realize that those women’s experience was no idle tale, the apostles began to realize that the tomb was indeed empty because it could not hold Jesus anymore than death could take him from them. Jesus lived in, with, through and beyond them, and his presence continued to mold them into a new reality. They began to experience Jesus after his human death in a way that assured them that Jesus, in the full integrity of his personal humanity, was alive with an entirely new kind of life. The disciples experienced Jesus as present among them, and able to interact with them. The disciples experienced Jesus as living within them. And because of this indwelling, they were now Jesus’ post-Easter body, the instrument of his presence in the world just as our natural bodies are the instruments of our human presence in the world. Jesus had done the work of God dwelling in him. Now Jesus’ followers were carrying on Jesus’ own work in the world as Jesus dwelled in them. They began to understand that death, while horrific and very real, is no longer final. Life can be lived fully. Love can be given extravagantly. Justice is the way to peace, and is worth seeking.

Saint Paul explained it to the Romans and the Corinthians, and the Gospels present it through the Easter narratives. Jesus now lives the absolute, eternal, and indestructible life of God. But his life is fully personal, truly human as well as divine, because the Risen Jesus remains fully and truly human. This is the fullness of life that Jesus came to bring, that whoever truly believes in him will have eternal life.

To be Christians is to be people of the Resurrection. More and more of us today know that Jesus did not die to save us from some fallen state. More and more of us know that Jesus did not die to appease an angry God. Jesus didn’t save us from the past. Jesus showed us that we too have the capacity to be the light of the world! We already possess the ability to evolve and become. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection show us the way to be LOVE; that power at the very heart of reality. Our call is not to leave Jesus hanging on the cross but to join him as God’s people of the Resurrection. When we finally let go of the fears that enslave us, Resurrection happens. When the Mary’s, Mary Magdalene’s, and Joanna’s of this world are heard, Resurrection happens. When we welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, Resurrection happens. When we give voice to the voiceless, Resurrection happens. When we embody LOVE Resurrection happens again and again.

I will close with the words of the wonderful poet, Lucille Clifton:

the green of jesus
is breaking the ground
and the sweet smell of delicious jesus
is opening the house and
the dance of jesus music
has hold of the air and
the world is turning
in the body of jesus and
the future is possible

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

Good Friday - Friday, April 19, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Rev. Matthew Wright, CRC
Good Friday - Friday, April 19, 2019

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:16-25
John 18:1-19:42

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

“It is finished.”  These are Jesus’ final words in John’s account of the Passion that we’ve just heard.  In Latin, this is Consummatum est—It is consummated.  Today, Good Friday, is the consummation of the marriage of heaven and earth; the consummation of the union Jesus has been living into, and out of, throughout his ministry.  Today, Jesus’ laboring on the Cross is his final great act of lovemaking with the world.

And we, the Church, have created some truly horrible theologies around this final act—that it was payment to a wrathful god; that Jesus took the beating we deserve.  John Dominic Crossan says that most of our so-called “atonement theology” amounts to little more than “cosmic child-abuse.”  But we only stray down those dead-end roads when fail to miss the note of cosmic love in which Jesus’ whole life is sung and offered; when we fail to recognize the God of Love he reveals in his living, and today, in the consummation of his life, in his dying.

In this final great act of lovemaking, in Jesus’ dying, he quickens a new kind of human life, a new possibility.  Bred into all of us, as our evolutionary baggage, is a survival-of-the-fittest instinct or tendency; we all come into the world with deeply programmed fight-or-flight responses.  And this programming, helpful as it has been in our evolutionary history, leads us to all manner of division, separation, and tribalism within the human family today.  It’s our essential tendency to “other”—to make of someone else an object of competition; an enemy.  It’s a way of seeing the world governed by our primitive hindbrain—what scientists often call our “reptilian” or “lizard brain.”

And while we can thank this “lizard brain” for bringing us this far in humanity’s unfolding, we nevertheless see in Jesus an effort at every turn to overcome this kneejerk tendency to “other” and to replace it instead with a different possibility: upholding the Samaritan (heretic) as a model of godliness; finding great faith in a (pagan) Roman centurion; looking and loving outside of the lines and beyond the boundaries; pushing his disciples to see not from fear and separation, but from our essential unity.

Last night, Maundy Thursday—knowing that he’s about to die—Jesus prayed to the Father, “May they all be one, as you and I are one.”  May they all make this leap beyond fear and division.  And he then bears that seeing from oneness all the way down to his dying breath.  Perhaps this is what we really mean when we speak of “the Atonement”—which, of course, etymologically simply means “at-one-ment”: making one.

Can love, can seeing from oneness, be held even into our moments of greatest fear, greatest contraction—held down into the world’s deepest darkness and suffering?  Can all of it be included in love?  Or will even Jesus retreat at the last (as we most likely would) into his primitive fear-centers and curse those who would kill him?  We could understand it if he did.  We would probably even forgive it.  In fact, we might be comforted by it.  But then the new possibility, the new life he brings, would not have been consummated—would not have been quickened in the heart of the world.

Jesus’ path all along has been a path of self-emptying, outpoured love; of what St. Paul calls kenosis.  Can Jesus hold true to that path, even today, betrayed, suffering, and crucified?  Luke tells us that among his dying words were these, spoken for his murderers: “Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”  Every act of fear, hate, betrayal, of selfishness, of othering, Jesus sees is simply an act of ignorance—because when we truly know… as Jesus did—when we truly know that we’re not separate, all that’s left is love.

Jesus holds true to the path; he does not judge or blame or other.  He holds the seeing; he stays rooted and grounded and dies in love.  This is Atonement, at-one-ment.  I don’t think anyone has ever better understood or expressed the meaning of this reality than Julian of Norwich, that great 14th century mystic, who following her visions of the Crucified Christ wrote:

“Here saw I a great one-ing between Christ and us, to mine understanding: for when He was in pain, we were in pain.  And all creatures that might suffer pain, suffered with Him.  The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another.  In the sight of God, we are all oned, and one person is all people and all people are one person.”

Jesus looks with these eyes, with this seeing, as he dies.  It is consummated; his lovemaking is complete.  He dies and the seed of his life falls into the ground.  “Very truly, I tell you, unless a seed, a grain of wheat, falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

Today, with this Consummatum est, the seed of heaven falls into the womb of the earth, and something new is conceived.  A new kind of life.  A new kind of human being.  A human being who refuses to give in to fear or hatred or othering.  In fully consummating this possibility, Jesus opens it for all of us.

That great Christian mystic of recent years, Beatrice Bruteau, wrote that “Christ is the ‘first mutant,’ who passes his ‘genes’ or form of life to those who come after him.”  Kenosis lived to the hilt, self-emptying in unjudging love, seeing from unity down to one’s dying breath, is now planted as a fully consummated, fully realized possibility within the DNA of the human family.

Some of you may know the writings of Caryll Houselander, a Roman Catholic mystic, author, poet who died in the 1950s.  She captures the mystery beautifully:

“[When Christ died] the whole world was sown with the seed of Christ’s life; that which happened thirty years ago in the womb of the Virgin Mother was happening now, but now it was happening yet more secretly, yet more mysteriously, in the womb of the whole world.  Christ had already told those who flocked to hear Him preach that the seed must fall into the earth, or else remain by itself alone.  Now the seed of His life was hidden in darkness in order that His life should quicken in countless hearts, over and over again for all time.  His [death], which seemed to be the end, was the beginning.  It was the beginning of Christ-life in multitudes of souls.”

This is what is happening in the darkness of Good Friday.  Look past the fear and the hatred and the ignorance charging through and around the events of this day.  They’re all a distraction from what’s really going on.  Jesus isn’t paying-off an angry god, or offering himself in order to make you feel bad about yourself.  Rather, in the words of Cynthia Bourgeault,

“Jesus’ real purpose in this sacrifice was to wager his own life against his core conviction that love is stronger than death, and that the laying down of self which is the essence of this love leads not to death, but to life. . . . [The Paschal Mystery reminds] us that it is not only possible but imperative to fall through fear into love because that is the only way we will ever truly know what it means to be alive.”

Consummatum est.  Today, Good Friday, it is consummated.  On the Cross Jesus draws all the world to himself in one great and final act of lovemaking.  A new pattern is completed and a new humanity conceived.  And so, may the mutation continue!  May this love, sown today in the womb of the world, be quickened in all our hearts.

The last words I give to Lady Julian:

“Would you know your Lord’s meaning in this thing?  Know it well, love was his meaning.  Who showed it to you?  Love.  What did he show you?  Love.  Why did he show it?  For love.  Hold fast to this and you will know and understand more of the same; but you will never understand or know from it anything else, for all eternity.”

Amen.

Maundy Thursday - Thursday, April 18, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC
Maundy Thursday - Thursday, April 18, 2019

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

Love one another. Just as Christ loves you. You will be known as followers of Jesus by the love you have for one another. That is tonight’s important message. Love one another as Christ loves you.

And Jesus taught this important lesson by a show and tell. He washed the feet of the disciples as an example of the love he showed them. That evening the disciples got an embodied experience of what Jesus wanted them to live by. Love one another as I love you.

*****

The human need for physical, embodied practices seems universal. Before the age of literacy started to spread in Europe in the sixteenth century, things like pilgrimage, prayer beads, body prostrations, bows and genuflections, “blessing oneself” with the sign of the cross, statues, sprinkling things with holy water, theatrical plays and liturgies, incense and candles all allowed the soul to know itself through the outer world.

Even in our literate age, these practices often talk to the soul more deeply and effectively than what preachers and teachers can achieve with words. St. Francis reportedly said, "Preach Jesus, and if necessary use words."

Throughout Christian history, these embodied practices have been with us. Some of these practices we call “Sacraments.” Many other of these practices have sacramental value even if they are not part of our list of seven sacraments.

Our reading from First Corinthians today tells us of the institution of the Eucharist, a central sacrament in our Christian practice.

But I will focus on our Gospel reading. Our reading from the Gospel according to John tells us of an action of Jesus that feels like a sacrament to me.

The washing of the feet was a visible sign of God’s love for us in and beyond the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

*****

But before we envision the meanings of Jesus’ foot washing, let’s get our bearings of first-century Eastern Mediterranean hospitality in order to better understand the counterculture that John the Evangelist presents in his Gospel.

In Jesus’ time, when people were invited to partake of an important meal at someone’s house they would have bathed at home before attending the meal.

In going to their host’s house, they would have had to walk the streets in their sandals. Urban streets were often unpaved and nearly always filthy with animal and human waste.

In walking the streets to their host’s house, the guests’ feet would have gotten dirty again. Upon arrival at their host’s house, they would have benefited first thing of the courtesy of a foot washing.

As Jesus says, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean.” (John 13:10a).

Normally, the foot washing would have occurred prior to the meal. Also, the foot washing would have been performed by a slave or a low-ranking servant.

From this anthropological background to foot washing, we know that John is relating the foot washing as a symbol. A multi-layered symbol as it is.

*****

In the supper scene that includes the washing of the feet, some have seen a symbolic representation of the Incarnation. Others have seen references to baptism and reconciliation.

Let’s look at the Incarnation connection.
Jesus starts off as the guest of honor, reclining at the table in the central position.

He interrupts the dinner to take on one of the most demeaning tasks of a slave. He discards his outer robe.  He ties a towel around himself. Then he proceeds to wash the feet of his disciples turning upside down the honor hierarchy they have lived with for the last three years. After the washing, He then puts on his outer robe again and comes back to his place of honor at the table.

The Incarnation symbolism is that God in Jesus assumes the role of a slave in taking on human flesh before being glorified with the experience and nature of that human flesh back into divinity.

To quote from the Christian hymn included in Paul’s letter to the Philippians which we heard this past Sunday:

Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)

*****

So we can see the foot washing as a metaphor for the Incarnation. But of course, the washing of the feet was also Jesus’ embodied way of teaching us his new commandment:

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34)

In Latin this verse starts with “Mandatum novum do vobis.” From that first word “Mandatum” come our English words Maundy and mandate. This the Thursday of the new mandate.

The new commandment turns the world upside down. Those invested with honor and power are to be servant leaders, ministering to their followers, serving the greater good of their subordinates.

And what is “service”? The ideal of service is self-gift, an expression of love. That ideal of self-gift may be taken to the extreme of laying ¨down one's life for one's friends¨ (John 15:13)

And who is to serve? Everyone is to seek to be of service to others. Certainly, those called to leadership but, in fact, all those involved with God.

This service is to be an embodiment of God’s agapê; the highest form of love/charity and the love of God for humans and of humans for God.

We are not to seek honor, glory, and power over our fellows. We are to seek the greater good of all and to do this with utter humility.

And at this supper, Jesus knew “his hour had come.” This hour would involve Jesus’s deepest act of humility; to accept his passion for the love of God and the love of his friends. Jesus teaches the new commandment by example through and through. At this supper and beyond.

*****

So as you witness the foot washing tonight, think of how you humbly embody agapê in your life, in your ministry; remembering that we all are ministers in the flow of God’s Love. Let your feet be washed and may you walk humbly with your God in this Triduum and beyond.

Amen.

Palm Sunday, Year C - Sunday, April 14, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
Palm Sunday, Year C - Sunday, April 14, 2019

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke 22:14-23:56

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

“Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”

In the most recent issue of the magazine Christian Century, the publisher Peter Marty comments on the passage from St. Paul's Letter to the Philippians that is heard each year just before the dramatic reading of the Passion narrative, that awful and awe-filled story of the suffering and death of Jesus of Nazareth. Marty quotes from the famous “Christ Hymn” [Philippians 2:6-11] thought by some to be the earliest extant Christian hymn, predating even Paul. The text, so familiar, tells us that Christ humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

Marty points out that it has become commonplace for politicians and celebrities when put in a place of  praise or public service, to say that that they are “honored and humbled.” We've all heard it and may even have said it ourselves. But as Marty points out, this is as often as not:  “... a clever method for announcing personal triumph, goodness, or happiness by using modest-sounding language intended to mitigate critique.”

Christ Jesus was humbled. But as Marty points out, no one humbled him. He humbled himself. And that's true of us as well. Others can shame us, disparage us, ostracize us, abuse us, dismiss us, ignore us, misunderstand us or even praise us. But no one can humble us. Not even God, as Marty rightly points out. Rather, as he observes: “Each of us holds the key for unlocking that otherwise invulnerable vault better known as our ego.” That is, that cluster of thoughts and memories, desires and social roles that we identify with and as our truest self and to which we hold fast by tooth and claw. 

Humility or the humbling of self is, like all the virtues, ultimately an inside job. And it's a peculiarly complicated, if essential one. The Rule of St. Benedict devotes long sections to  humility and carefully describes the signs or markers of lowliness of heart. Benedict concludes that if the life of faith and holiness is compared to a ladder, then paradoxically we descend by exaltation and ascend by humility, by lowering ourselves. Writing a century or so later, St. John Climacus in his Ladder of Divine Ascent, a text which is required Lenten reading in Eastern Christian monasteries, acknowledged just how hard it is to be truly humble:

“The sun shines on all alike, and vainglory beams on all activities. For instance I am vainglorious when I fast, and when I relax the fast to be unnoticed, I am again vainglorious by my prudence. When I am well dressed, I am quite overcome by vainglory. When I put on poor clothes, I am vainglorious again. When I talk I am defeated and when I am silent I am again defeated by it. However I throw this prickly thing, a spike stands upright.”

The mind is devious, as the Psalmist says, and our motives and best intentions are always more hidden, more complicated and perhaps more tainted than we either know or would like to admit. What to do?

Part of the answer, I think, lies in the icon that is displayed here. It is admittedly a very disturbing image. It shows Jesus, perhaps during, perhaps after his crucifixion, standing, as it were, in his grave, in his sarcophagus, with the cross of death looming up behind him. It looks to be an image of total and complete defeat. His eyes are closed or cast down, his hands are crossed meekly over the breast not in self defense but in utter surrender. The background is dark, even ominous, like the darkness of the tomb itself. And the title of this icon? In the Greek it is called Extreme Humility a name which itself is stunning. The icon illustrates the lengths to which God has gone—and will go—to bring about reconciliation and restoration, universal salvation and wholeness. Extreme—ultimate, preeminent—humility!

One Orthodox commentator remarks:

“The Humility of Christ is not meant in pietistic, psychological or moral terms. Christ is not humbled to reach moral perfection or for His own benefit. His humility is emptiness, it is the pouring out of Himself and it is understood under existential terms. He [Christ] takes the human nature...and reaches to the edge of death to heal and deify it.”  

Which is to say: to make human nature, make us, like unto God.

But Extreme Humility is not the only name of this icon. It has another title, one more common in the Slavic or Russian tradition and one even more surprising. For if you draw near you will see written here the words: The King of Glory.

Behold our king. This is the hard truth of Holy Week...which is also a deeply liberating truth. And that is that Christ's glory is not separate from, not distinct from his suffering. And nether is ours. Rather the two are one. This week reminds us in the starkest possible terms that Jesus's true glory is located not in power, miracle, grandeur, strength or control. And neither is ours. As important as power and strength can be when used wisely and rightly ordered to good ends, the root of glory and the depth of freedom lay in weakness, obedience, vulnerability, surrender, openness.

And that would be totally crazy were it not simultaneously coupled with the affirmation that God is God...and we are not. Our primal glory is rooted and grounded in the deepest truth about ourselves and our world: that we and it are God's and that in loving, willing obedience to God we find our liberty, our energy, our joy, our selves.

This of course is the paradox of Benedict's ladder. It is the paradox of today and of this whole week. It is the paradox of life. But it is true. And it, brothers and sisters, good news. We are not in control. We don't have to be in control. And yet through our loving obedience and tender submission we can become subjects and agents of liberation and justice and reconciliation and peace. And of a hope and a holiness and a joy that surpasses all human expectation and understanding.

I'll be the first to admit that can't get my head around this nor my heart. How can the man of Extreme Humility also be the King of Glory? How can the Crucified One also be the Glorified One? How can true freedom be found in lowly service? How can my own self-emptying become a doorway to fullness of life? I don't know.

But I do know that this is the work and the message and the mystery of this Sunday of the Passion and of this Holy Week. May God in mercy lead each of us deeper and deeper into this mystery, the mystery of the loving Heart which beats at the center the whole universe. May God bring us all to the joy of a holy Easter, which we taste even now, even today.

Fifth Sunday in Lent - Sunday, April 7, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. John Forbis, OHC
Fifth Sunday in Lent - Sunday, April 7, 2019

Isaiah 43:16-21
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

It’s Lent 5, the last Sunday of Lent, and now the Cross is beginning to cast its shadow even as far as two miles over one house in Bethany.  However, considering there’s a death warrant out, not only for Jesus but Lazarus as well, two miles isn’t that far, and tensions are high.

There sit the two condemned to death side by side feasting at the table.  Martha is working, of course.  Judas, agitated, isolated, alone and barely able to conceal the fact that he is betraying Jesus to the Jewish authorities, watches Mary at Jesus’ feet again. 

Only this time, Mary’s not just listening.  She’s bathing his feet.  A fragrance from a rare aromatic plant from the Himalayas used by ancient sages for worship curls through the room like it is worth all the 300 denarii it cost.  That amount equals a laborer’s yearly wage, an outrage and obscene display.
 
Furthermore, Mary, one of the women of the house, insults herself taking on the role of a servant girl, a slave or something more lascivious.  She bundles in her hands her hair like supple broom and wipes Jesus’ feet. Paul calls this part of a woman’s body the most glorious.

How could Jesus just take this all in and succumb to such a seduction? 

John calls Judas a thief and discounts his verbal protest as a veil for greed.  Judas has been stealing from the common purse who knows how long.  He is the betrayer, but fear can so overwhelm someone that he is led to actions that even betray himself. 

Judas is so confused and baffled about Jesus, he is blind to anything beyond his own survival.  But can any of us be exempt from such a liability?  Besides, at least some of the disciples could be harboring some of the same thoughts; at least, Judas has the audacity to say them. 
 
But why does Jesus open himself to this lavish, sensual touch?  Because the shadow is darker and more enveloping for him than anyone else in the room.  He also knows just how much darker that shadow will get.  So does Judas, and so does Mary, it seems. 

But here he doesn’t have to teach, heal, perform miracles or do anything.  This is the rare time in his life where all he has to do is to receive what Martha, Mary and Lazarus give best.  Even now they are doing what comes so naturally for them. 

Mary’s spice counteracts the stench of death of which Martha was afraid Lazarus would reek upon opening his tomb.  Jesus is so affected by her gesture that it compels him to perform the same devotion to his disciples just a few days later.  If Judas were with them, he would wash Judas’s feet as well.  Mary teaches Jesus and Judas more than anyone thought was possible.

But then, the shadow sends everyone inside the house back remembering the stories of the instrument of torture they heard about since they were children.  Can Judas or any of the disciples face such a destiny for themselves or for their teacher?  Does it all end there?

Isaiah’s words echo for all of them now, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.” 

In this house in Bethany, Jesus lives as he dies.  He is being prepared for the burial into the hearts of a man awakened by a new wind and who was possibly the first recipient of this ointment and two sisters who do only what they know to do – attend to him in their own unique characteristic ways.

Imagine offering Mary’s human, physical touch to Jesus, Martha’s intimate meal before his anguish and death, and Lazarus’s unbreakable bond with him.  We can. 

There are probably some of us here who do, and others who have some sense of a desire to do so.  Then, there might be others of us who are afraid to do so.  The poor are always with us.  We are surrounded by the instruments of daily grinding torture meted out to those who couldn’t possibly dream of having a home or washing Jesus’ feet even with water.  There is the laborer who’s yearly wage is barely or sometimes not enough to keep her or her children properly clothed, fed and in good health.

There is Judas, the disciples, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, another condemned man.  There are Jesus’ accusers, the crowds who cry out, “Crucify him!”, the High Priests and Scribes, Pontius Pilate and the Roman soldiers who mocked and beat him mercilessly.  There’s Barabbas and the thieves suffering the same agonies on both sides of Jesus.  They are among us and some even within us.
 
Yes, we will always have the poor, but does it all end with a burial?  Not with Mary, Martha and Lazarus’s celebration of life amidst so much loss and death.

The shadow that is cast on all of them and us is just cruciform – no sign of any body.  And it will soon be without one again along with an empty tomb in a remote garden left with only linen wrappings and a cloth that was on his head.  Another woman will be the first to see him after his burial and fall at his feet as well.

It is all so new, so terrifying, so heartbreaking, confusing and misunderstood.  It’s tactile and fragrant and takes our breath away while giving us new life in return. It is the opportunity to give and receive love extravagantly even to and from those who spurn it. and then wince at how pungent that love is filling our hearts with Christ.

Fourth Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 31, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Richard Paul Vaggione, OHC
Fourth Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 31, 2019

Joshua 5:9-12
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.