The Funeral of Roy E. Parker, OHC - Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
The Funeral of Roy E. Parker, OHC - Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

Click here to watch the full funeral service on our Facebook page.

Last Wednesday I received an email with the intriguing subject line: “Hello 30 Years later, and condolences for the passing of Br. Roy Parker.” It was from Eric Seddon, and it had indeed been 30 years since we were last in contact. Eric's mother was the guesthouse director here at Holy Cross Monastery in those years, and...well, let me let Eric tell the tale as he posted it in his blog “The Jazz Clarinet.”

“I learned just yesterday, via the NY Times obituary that one of the greatest of all clarinetists, William O. Smith (better know to jazz audiences as Bill Smith) passed away last February 29th. He was 93 years old, and lived a life wherein he contributed not only some of the finest jazz of the past century, but expanded our understanding of the clarinet, continuously, for decades.... I can't help but share one little story, of how I first heard Smith's music.

I was a teenager in the 1980s, immersed in clarinet playing and specifically jazz, when I happened to meet a monk from Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, NY. My brother and I used to spend time volunteering there--we'd clean the guesthouse before retreats. One of the monks was named Br Roy Parker, and though a soft spoken man, known for the masterful calligraphy he drew, he was in fact a huge fan of jazz, and while working in his shop would often listen to Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck, and the like. He soon learned of my love of Goodman, Shaw, and others, and we'd talk jazz regularly. One Sunday afternoon when I was there to clean, Br. Roy announced that he was switching over his whole collection of cassette tapes to the newly introduced CD format -- and he gave me first pick of anything in his shop that I wanted. I don't remember all the tapes I took home that day -- but I remember the most important: Near-Myth/Brubeck-Smith.

I had never heard of Bill Smith before, but that album opened new vistas for me as a clarinetist.... For me personally, his art remains the most fascinating and satisfying of modern jazz clarinet.

The day Bill Smith died, I'd actually been messaging a friend about his music, how much it continued to inspire me. And when I learned just yesterday of Smith's death, I tried to find contact information for my old friend, Br. Roy Parker, who I hadn't spoken to in over thirty years. I wanted to let him know about Smith's passing if he hadn't already heard, and to thank him for introducing this music to me. But it turns out Br. Roy passed away just nine days before Bill Smith. Br. Roy was a great artist in his own right, and appreciated all the technical nuances jazz musicians navigated - he would ask me all about those things with great interest. He was a great listener, and learned from what he heard. I hope and pray that he and William O are swapping notes in heaven right now.

The greatest music is so powerful that it impresses itself right onto one's life story. Br. Roy's kindness and Bill Smith's celebratory brilliance will forever be connected in my mind.”

Great music, great art, great people do impress themselves onto one's life story. And today we remember and give thanks for Br. Roy who impressed himself so indelibly onto Eric's life story, onto our life story and, I'd venture to say, on the life stories of countless others. He was, as his memorial card says, “Priest – Monk - Artist” all of which came together in a remarkable synergy characterized by gentleness, humility, kindness, creativity, passion, discipline and devotion.

There are many ways to speak of a life, many ports of entry, if you will. I want this morning to remember Roy through his art, which is to say, through his calligraphy. Though his artistry came out in so many ways. Who can forget the many years he devoted himself to baking bread, wonderful whole wheat bread and sourdough bread? Yes, sometimes it came out a little heavy, but it was always nourishing and delicious and was made with patient, loving care. Roy delighted in feeding others, whether through his bread, or through his presiding at the Holy Eucharist, which he did with Zen-like grace and recollection. Or through his preaching, which was always carefully researched and prepared. I would see him in the library for hours on end studying biblical texts, often in the original Hebrew or Greek, and consulting countless commentaries, and then, as like as not, have him appear with an outrageous prop to illustrate his point.

Br. Roy and the "Markan Sandwich"

I remember once when during his sermon he pulled out two pieces of bread surrounding bacon, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise...an apt (and yummy) illustration of the Markan “sandwich” that he was expounding. And for those of you not in the know, a Markan sandwich is a stylistic device used in the Gospel of St. Mark and characterized by the insertion of one narrative episode between two parts of another one. Got it?

Roy fed in other ways as well, especially when he served as an AIDS chaplain at Manhattan Plaza, a residence for artists in New York City, at the height of the AIDS crisis. I think it was precisely Roy's reticence and inner stillness that made him effective in this ministry. And of course having himself the soul of an artist. Cor ad cor loquitur, says the psalm: “Heart speaks to heart.” That speaking went well beyond words. It went straight from Roy's heart to that of the other.

So in the spirit of Roy, I produce my own props, works of calligraphy that Roy executed over the years. There were many, including private commissions. There were greeting cards and posters. There were names on our doors and texts both sacred and profane. And these are a few which, at least to me, capture Roy and his way of being a man of God and a man for others.

The Glory of God is the human person fully alive.

The first is the quotation from Irenaeus of Lyon, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” Roy, like all of us, struggled to be fully alive, but his struggle was not his own, it was I think, also for the glory of God. From his early days at MIT and its jazz band—Roy was a drummer—to his years in the Society of St. John the Evangelist and then in the Order of the Holy Cross, Roy struggled to grow and become ever more alive. And as is true of us all, this was a journey of fits and starts, of peaks and valleys. But Roy did become more alive and transparent as the years went on, more his own man and therefore more available to others. More fully alive. It is no wonder that this simple and I might add, best-selling piece of art went through several iterations over the years as did he. What is true of art is so often true of us all as well.

The second work is simply a recipe...it is Roy's recipe for whole grain bread, beautifully penned and illustrated. It begins with the words “In your favorite breadmixing bowl whisk honey into ½ cup lukewarm water & add yeast.” In your favorite breadmixing bowl...which presumes we have one. Maybe we do. All of us. It is the container that holds the ingredients of a rising and nourishing life.

A recipe for whole grain bread.

Third there is the Buddhist gatha:

“Let me respectfully remind you: Life & Death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to Awaken. Awaken. Awaken. Take heed. Do not squander your life."

I feel a certain personal connection with this piece as I first saw the text through the Maitri Hospice in San Francisco in 1991 and some years later shared it with Roy and the Mount Calvary community. It speaks so honestly and directly to our mortal human condition, of which we are now perhaps more aware than ever before—and gives us our marching orders and our deepest aspiration: “Do not squander your life.” Roy did not. And with God's help, neither shall we.

When life sucks...

Finally, there is this piece of calligraphy that I found in Roy's studio. I don't believe I had ever seen it before. It says, somewhat enigmatically: “When life sucks & hands you lemons...I say beat the crap out of it and demand some California oranges as well.”

Well, as we know, life handed Roy lemons in the last year of his life, when disease took away first his ability to sing, then to speak clearly, then to speak at all, then to swallow. But through it all, Roy beat the crap out of it and demanded California oranges. He demanded and succeeded in retaining his dignity and self-direction even as he became more and more dependent on others. And he did so with unfailing courtesy and patience. This nobility marked even his passing. For on the afternoon of his last day he wrote on his note pad to Br. Bernard and me: “I want to lie down and die.” And so he did, within hours. Lemons, yes, but California oranges as well, as befits someone descended of Yankee stock but born in sunny southern California.

When we planned Roy's funeral for today, we did so because we thought our guesthouse would be open and going at full tilt throughout Lent. Tuesday, March 31 looked to be a quiet day, and all the brothers planned to be home. We had not realized however that in the Episcopal Church calendar, today is also the commemoration of another great artist, the 17th century poet John Donne. Donne was, like Roy, a priest. He was also a notable preacher to British royalty, perhaps the greatest English preacher of his day. But he is most remembered for his poems. And none more than his famous “No Man is an Island”

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

The bell does toll for Roy today and for all of us. But through and beyond that mournful tolling there is also a hope and a promise lying within Donne's other emblematic poem “Death be not proud.” As he puts it:

One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

John Donne, the Christian priest and poet, knew just as our Br. Roy knew and, I trust, as we too know: that in Christ Jesus, death is overcome. And so today we proclaim with the church throughout the ages that:

“Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on those in the tomb bestowing life.”

Oh death, be not proud. Oh death, thou too shalt die.

And you, dear Br. Roy, may you go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service in the heavenly kingdom prepared for us all from the foundation of the world through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Br. Roy Parker, OHC  1933-2020  

The Fifth Sunday in Lent - March 29, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Maximillian Esmus, n/OHC 

The Fifth Sunday in Lent - March 29, 2020 

Ezekiel 37:1-14
Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45

Click here for an audio version of this sermon. 

He’s back! Your brother is really returned! He stumbles toward you, tearing away his burial cloths. As the initial shock subsides, he catches your eye and gives a huge smile of delight and surprise. He throws open his arms and draws you and your sister into a joyful, if somewhat smelly, embrace. Your family, torn by illness, premature death, and grief, is once again restored. By God’s healing power, all has been made well.

Or so it seems for the moment. It’s worth recalling how the story continues. We left off hearing that many of the Judeans who witnessed this sign believed in Jesus. But in the very next verse we read that “some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done.”¹

This raising of Lazarus, Jesus’s ultimate act of healing, proof that God’s life-giving power reaches even beyond the grave, is, for the religious authorities of Jerusalem, the very last straw. In short order, a council of hand-wringing Pharisees is called, a price is placed on Jesus’s head, and the deadly machinery of betrayal, indictment, and crucifixion is set in motion. The council also makes a plot to kill the now famous Lazarus. They’ll do anything to halt the ongoing spread of Jesus’s ministry and message.

They thought to themselves, “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”² The Pharisees likely were not wrong in this calculation; oppressive imperial regimes tend not to favor large-scale popular movements such as the crowds following Jesus. In all honesty, if I, like the Pharisees, were faced with the potential destruction of everything I hold dear, my home, my livelihood, and my most cherished religious practice, would I act any differently? Would I really hear with the ear of faith, and discern the word of God in Jesus and follow him? Or would I, too, be busy plotting a strategy for my own survival? I don’t know.

These readings bring up for me the fundamental question of faith: What does it mean to be faithful? To be faithful is to follow where God calls, and to do as the Lord commands, as best as I can discern it in this present moment. Faith is the abolishment of fear. Not abolishment in the sense of the denial or elimination of fearful feelings, but the choice to let God alone be the guide of my actions, not my felt needs or wants or doubts.

We have an example of faithfulness in Ezekiel. God challenges him, “Can these bones live?” and he gives an endearingly tepid response: “O Lord, you know…” Not exactly a electrifying statement of faith. Ezekiel seems not quite ready, at the intellectual level to say “yes” to the impossible, but his true faithfulness lies in the fact that he spoke God’s word to those bones anyway. Imagine how silly it would feel, prophesying to the inanimate; that is, until they actually start to come alive. Imagine announcing to an exiled people their impending restoration, when no evidence of any such thing is forthcoming. As impossible as it might have seemed, Ezekiel spoke the prophecy.

Turning back to the start of the Gospel, we have an example of faith in Thomas the disciple, who said, “let us go and die with him.” He doesn’t seem swelling with hopeful belief here. Yet it doesn’t matter – he went, and got the others to follow.

Examine the faithfulness of Mary, and of Martha, who, when told her brother will live again, mutters, well yes, there is the resurrection at the end of time. It’s relatively easy to believe in a distant, far off vision. But today? Here? Jesus says, “Yes, right here and right now. The resurrection and the life is standing here talking with you. Do you believe that my followers will have life?” Again, she gives a kind of sideways answer: “Yes, I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” She stops short of expressing hope in seeing her brother again. The sisters do not doubt Jesus’s power, but remain wedded to the quite true fact that no life can reenter a body which is already stinking from the processes of nature.

At least, those are their expressed beliefs. But look at the sisters’ actions: Mary does lead Jesus to Lazarus’ tomb. And despite her complaint about the stench, Martha does have the stone removed. They cooperate with Christ’s saving acts anyway.

And look at the faithfulness of Jesus himself. His heavenly Father intends him to reveal God’s glory, and Jesus lets nothing get in the way of letting God guide his actions to this end. Let’s go back to the beginning to the story. Why do you suppose, after hearing of Lazarus’s illness, Jesus stayed two days longer where he was? He could have gone right away in secret and ministered to him. He actually tells us plainly why he delayed: That God’s glory might be revealed. Waiting two more days allowed time for word of the death to spread throughout Judea, time for a large number to travel from Jerusalem to Bethany to offer their condolences. I think Jesus paused to ensure that the maximum number of people would be there to witness his ultimate sign.

Jesus must have known that the crowd would include people who would report him to the authorities, that this act would greatly increase his notoriety and hasten his death sentence. He also must have known that before long, Lazarus would become a target as well, and grief would once again visit upon this beloved family of Bethany. Jesus knows that their lives, like the lives of all his disciples, will be marked by pain and trial. So he weeps with them, and for them. How easy it would have been to turn aside in order to preserve his life, in order to avoid endangering the earthly lives of his disciples! But no. Nothing would dissuade him from acting in complete faithfulness to his call to speak God’s Word to Lazarus, to his sisters, and to the crowds.

Faithfulness is about the choices we make. Belief, in terms of intellectual beliefs or even gut intuitions, may or may not be present at the moment faith is called for. I’m learning that those sorts of felt certainties are a rare gift from God which, in any case, I am ready to receive only after I’ve made the choice to act in faith.

I, for instance, feel no certainty at all that everything will work out to God’s greater purpose in this viral epidemic. I cannot at present see how God is going to bring new life out of this experience of disease, which is ravaging bodies, ravaging families, and in the necessary steps taken to reduce its spread, ravaging our economy, leaving many wondering how they will make ends meet in the coming months. I, sometimes, can accept the world as it is as part of the gift of life. And sometimes, I struggle to understand how a world that features deadly viruses, cancers, and a host of natural disasters, is the same world that God created and called “very good.” My capacity to articulate belief stops short of saying, “all shall be well.” I just don’t know.

I think God is teaching me, in today’s lessons, not to be overly concerned that I do not feel God’s presence, that I cannot see how God is working, or that I cannot make myself believe in seemingly impossible outcomes. My lack of understanding God’s ways does not preclude me from faith. Faith means choosing to act in a way that demonstrates trust in God. To act under the assumption that God loves me more than I could possibly know or feel.

Faithfulness means not waiting for God to take away all my fears and set the conditions just right before I agree to respond to his call. Faithfulness means discerning and doing God’s will while experiencing fear and doubt. And upon doing it, faith means not clinging to the outcomes of my efforts. Our model in this is Jesus himself, whose efforts to inaugurate the Reign of God, when judged by human standards, ended in utter failure. We are called to the kind of poverty of spirit that commends into God’s hands the fruits – or lack of fruits – of every work, grasping at nothing.

So my prayer today is not for the right mental states or for the comfort of emotional security. I pray for the grace to love what God commands and to do it. I pray we all may have the strength to discern what is the will of God, and respond accordingly. Where does this strength come from? From love, the love of Christ that dwells in you by the power of the Spirit. Richard Rohr put it this way:

"Love has you. Love is you. Remember that you already are what you are seeking. Any fear ‘that your lack of fidelity could cancel God’s fidelity, is absurd.’ Love has finally overcome fear.”³ 

Grounded in love, may we answer God’s call, the same call given Ezekiel: to speak forth God’s holy Word to one another, inviting the Holy Spirit to come enflesh our dry bones and breathe new life into our world.

---

1. John 11:46
2. John 11:48
3. Richard Rohr, "Love is Stronger Than Death," Friday, March 27, 2020

The Feast of the Annunciation - Wednesday, March 26, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bob Pierson, OHC
The Feast of the Annunciation - Wednesday, March 26, 2020

Isaiah 7:10-14
Hebrews 10:4-10
Luke 1:26-38

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

No typescript is available for this sermon. An excerpt is below. Hear the full sermon at the link above.

What does this Feast of the Annunciation have to say to us in our current situation as we battle the Coronavirus? As I was praying about that, I recalled one of our catchphrases in 12-step recovery:

"Let go, and let God."

Here's Mary - a teenage girl - in a town called Nazareth, the middle of nowhere. And Luke tells us she was "perplexed" by the message of an angel. She had to wonder, "What's going to happen to me? Why me?"

She could have thought, "Fake news," and ignored the angel. But instead she said, "Here I am, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word." She didn't try to control the situation, she didn't panic - she trusted. She "let go, and let God" take care of her.

Easier said than done, you might say. Yes. It's not easy to trust, to let go of controlling outcomes, to trust that God has a plan for us and is working to fulfill that plan.

That's not to say that we should just sit back and do nothing. We need to do our own part. But in the end we have no choice but to let God work in our lives - "Let it be with me according to your word."

The Fourth Sunday in Lent - March 22, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Richard Vaggione, OHC
The Fourth Sunday in Lent - March 22, 2020

1 Samuel 16:1-13
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

No typescript is available for this sermon. You can listen to the sermon here.

The Feast of St. Joseph -- The First Profession of the Monastic Vow by Br. Luc Simon Thuku, OHC

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
The Feast of St. Joseph
The First Profession of the Monastic Vow by Br. Luc Simon Thuku, OHC

2 Samuel 7:4,8-16
Romans 4:13-18
Luke 2:41-52

Click here for an audio version of this sermon and the rite of Profession.

It seems appropriate that we celebrate a monastic profession on the feast of St. Joseph. Joseph and monastic life have much in common, not only because tradition and culture have never quite known what to make of either, but more importantly, because of the virtues Joseph exemplifies---like steadfastness, courage, compassion, hope, faithfulness, and perseverance. All are required to live the monastic life with integrity. This makes Joseph the ideal model for the monastic. These virtues have brought Simon to the place he now stands today. Desire for God is not a merely personal, or even an eccentric choice. It is a consequence of what we are as humans. We are made to meet God, and it is in this encounter that we become simultaneously fully human and fully divine.¹ The only people who are transformed by this life, are people who feel safe, who feel their dignity, and who feel loved. That’s what we try to do for one another—offer relationships in which we can change. Human beings need a combination of safety and conflict to keep moving forward in life.

As you well know, Simon, initial formation takes us outside of our familiar framework and can conjure basic questions where meaning is challenged, decisions reconsidered, and doubts unearthed. It’s alarming and exhausting. It can drain us of joy. This is true now for all of us in these uncertain times. When our private little worlds go to dust, as St. Joseph’s did also, hope digs in the ruins of our heart for memory of God’s promise to bring good out of bad, joy out of sadness, and life out of death. Hope is not optimism in the face of the dire circumstances of this pandemic.  Hope is not founded on denial. Hope is made of memories which remind us that there is nothing in life we have not faced that we did not, through grace, survive. Hope is the certainty that something will make sense, regardless of how it turns out. In a dream an angel ignited hope in Joseph; in our own conversion, we can experience the same.

Today, Simon, as you make your commitment to continue to discern your call to this life, you remind all of us that the paschal mystery of Jesus’ dying and rising is the pattern of our monastic life. The vow gives less opportunity to run away from those parts of us that God is seeking to convert and transform. Our conversion is a sign of our commitment to allow God to continue to work within us. Day by day God reveals to us more and more of the true self we are made to be.

While we come here seeking God, it becomes more and more evident that God has sought us. In the depths of the heart we hear the invitation to abide with Christ. We cannot live this life apart from abiding in the love of Christ. He is the source of our life and love and all that flows from it in community. Our monastic life is the call to the all-inclusive love of God. Love is a transforming power. It is a disciplined habit of care and concern, that like all virtues, can be perfected only over a lifetime. Giving a witness to that love, leads deeper and deeper into the meaning of being chosen by Christ, and of preferring nothing to Christ.

Before Jesus’ birth, Joseph surveyed the mess he had absolutely nothing to do with and decided to trust that God was present in it. That same trust is required of all of us today. As Benedictines, stability provides the context for faithfulness in the instabilities of life which lie ahead for all of us. Faithfulness is a prerequisite to trust and intimacy. With divine love flowing through us we can see others and ourselves in our connectedness and wholeness. The vow does not put an end to struggle. Struggle stretches us beyond ourselves. It is what leaves us open to truth, however difficult it may be to accept. Without it, our faith would be the kind that happens around us but not in us. God intends us to live together in the fragility of human imperfection. So even though we will constantly fail, it is not the final word. In this we come to know ourselves, each other, and God.

Today, we are most like Joseph, presented with situations beyond our control, tempted to divorce ourselves from it, when an angel whispers hope in our ears as it did in his: “Do not be afraid, God is here.” It may not be business as usual, or how we had planned it, but God is present here too, if we will own it.

As you continue your discernment, Simon, the more honest you are in examining your own motives, the closer you are to being yourself. The more equipped you are to distinguish the person you want to be from the one everybody else wants you to be, the more likely you are to become it. Without the honesty it takes to unmask the self, there is no hope for liberation, let alone fulfillment. When we refuse to listen to the dreams that cry within us for fullness of life, we fossilize ourselves. When we give way to the obstacles that we create for ourselves, we doom ourselves to underdevelopment.²

To make a truly life-giving discernment, we all need to squarely face what it is that gives us life. We need to speak the truth of our interests, our abilities, our desires, our boredom, our dissatisfaction—even our long-time need to satisfy others. We need the help that comes from having our confusion and despair, our disappointment and anxiety accepted and understood by those who are not themselves threatened by what we might do with our own lives. We need the acceptance and encouragement of each other so we can move beyond fear to the freedom it takes to be who we are. The power that comes with self-discovery at any age catalyzes us. It drives the young; it surprises the middle aged; it emboldens those who might be tempted to declare life over before it has even truly begun. Our fundamental obligation in obedience is to be or to become what God wills. To do what God wills is secondary. We act according to what we are, so that we can stop doing what everyone else wants us to do and begin to care more about what God has made us to do.

The Gospel gives us an assurance that we are operating inside of an abundant, infinite Love.³ Within that abundance, Simon, it’s time for you to take the next step. We give great thanks that you’ve decided to do so, as we continue this journey together.  +Amen.

1. Michael Casey, Grace: On the Journey to God (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2018),41.
2. Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening to the Voice of Vocation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
2000), 49.
3. Adapted from Richard Rohr: Essential Teachings on Love, eds. Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger
(Orbis Books: 2018), 224-225.

The Third Sunday in Lent - March 15, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
The Third Sunday in Lent - March 15, 2020

Exodus 17:1-7
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

No typescript is available for this sermon. You can listen to the sermon here.

"God of the present moment,
God who in Jesus stills the storm
and soothes the frantic heart;
bring hope and courage to us as we wait or work in uncertainty.
Bring hope that you will make us the equal of whatever lies ahead.
Bring us courage to endure what cannot be avoided,
for your will is health and wholeness;
you are God, and we need you.
Amen."

adapted from A New Zealand Prayerbook

The Second Sunday in Lent - March 8, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Aidan Owen, OHC
The Second Sunday in Lent - March 8, 2020

Genesis 12:1-4a
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

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

I’ll admit: I’ve tended to think rather poorly of old Nicodemus. He can come across as a bumbling, Peter-type, one who just doesn’t get it. His questions seem so literal-minded. How can a person, having grown old, enter again into the mother’s womb? Jesus’ teasing of him only adds to the impression. “Are you really a teacher of Israel?”

The truth, of course, is that a couple thousand years of liturgy, doctrine, prayer, and theology, and we don’t get it any more than Nicodemus. Not really. The truth, too, is that what Jesus is saying in this morning’s gospel passage, as throughout the gospels, doesn’t make a lot of sense. At least, not to the rational mind, conditioned as it is with worldly values and frames of reference.

What does it mean to be born from above? Or, as another translation of the Greek would put it, “born again?”

Every Lent my friends and family ask me what I’m giving up this year. You’ve probably been asked, or have asked, the same thing. I find myself more years than not saying that I’m not giving anything up. Usually, I take something on. This year, my Lenten practice is quite simple: I want to pray twice a day, which is my normal commitment to private prayer, and one from which I’ve strayed in the busyness of the last couple of months.

I want to return to God, not in some dramatic way. Not with tears and sighs, but simply and quietly, letting my daily need for God draw me closer. And not so that I’m brought face to face with my wretchedness, but so that my need and God’s love become a kind of inhale and exhale, the one carrying gently into the other.

I wonder what would happen if, instead of giving up chocolate or Facebook, we fasted from our certainties—from our assured judgments about other people, ourselves, God, Scripture, the spiritual life, and prayer? What would happen if we prayed to God to be freed from our habitual ways of thinking and doing? What if we asked God to surprise us?

We might find, for instance, that Nicodemus isn’t some bumbling fool but instead a kind of Simeon or Abram, an Anna or a Sarah: a faithful servant longing for the redemption of Israel, for the healing of his homeland and his people, for the fulfillment of his deepest longing to know and love God and to be known and loved by God.

Perhaps his questions to Jesus are not those of a disbelieving man of limited imagination, but the honest seeking for answers of one whose God has surprised him yet again. Maybe his voice is filled with awe, or with longing, as he asks how, truly, can an old person become new again? How is any of us re-created, refreshed, renewed? How does any of us learn to see with fresh eyes and hear with unstopped ears the message of God’s unbounded and unbinding love?

Cynthia Bourgeault reminds us that

“The infallible way to extricate yourself [from whatever binds you] and reclaim your home in that sheltering kingdom is simply to freely release whatever you are holding onto—including, if it comes to this, life itself. The method of full, voluntary self-donation reconnects you instantly to the wellspring; in fact, it is the wellspring. The most daring gamble of Jesus’ trajectory of pure love may just be to show us that self-emptying is not the means to something else; the act is itself the full expression of its meaning and instantly brings into being ‘a new creation’: the integral wholeness of Love manifested in the particularity of a human heart.”

Full, voluntary release of whatever we are holding onto, and of whatever is holding on to us. Maybe that’s what it really looks like to be born again in Christ. Not only to release what we think is holding us back from full, loving relationship with God and God’s people. But to release everything we are holding onto, whether we think it good or not. Only then will we have enough space for God to surprise us.

I can’t hear any part of Abraham's story without hearing Sarah’s laugh, a laugh that turned from bitterness to joy, as she came to accept that God’s promise to her was true, impossible as it first seemed.

If scripture is to be believed, Abraham had little difficulty accepting God’s word to him. Most of us, I think, are more like Sarah. We would rather cling to our certainty of the limits of our lives, to our assurances of what is possible and what is not. We would rather be safe with what we know to be true about the world, ourselves, or God rather than to be surprised by that Spirit who blows wherever and whenever she will.

Could it really be true that God is making all things new, even in this dark moment of our national life? Even as the world burns under a cloud of greenhouse gas? Even as we’re all so painfully aware of our limitations, our needs, and our fears? Could it be that even now, here, in this moment, Jesus reaches out to each of us, calls us so gently and sweetly to curl up in his womb to be born once more?

Julian of Norwich puts it this way:

“Our true mother, Jesus, he who is all love, bears us into joy and eternal life; blessed may he be! So he sustains us within himself in love and was in labour for the full time until he suffered the sharpest pangs and the most grievous sufferings that ever were or shall be, and at the last he died. And when it was finished…he had born us to bliss…

The mother can give her child her milk to suck, but our dear mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and he does so most generously and most tenderly with the holy sacrament which is the precious food of life itself…

The mother can lay the child tenderly to her breast, but our tender mother Jesus, he can familiarly lead us into his blessed breast through his sweet open side [that bled on the cross for us]. He [who] says, “Look how I love you.” (Divine Revelations, pp. 141-142.)

What a surprise passing all understanding, to look into the eyes of our God, hanging from the tree of life that is also the birthing bed of our new life, and to hear her sweet whisper: “Look how I love you.” Yes, even you.

The First Sunday in Lent - March 1, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero, OHC
The First Sunday in Lent - March 1, 2020

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

“After Jesus was baptized, he was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

“After Jesus baptized, he was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

What?? In case you may have forgotten what happened at that baptism, let me read it for you: “And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’” And, so, “Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Why, thank you so much Spirit, for this lovely Baptism present! I think I will have a great time! Not! I’ll admit it, at first, I found the whole bit about the Spirit taking Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted somewhat appalling. My preparation for today’s sermon has involved huge feelings of righteous indignation in my prayer to God. I didn’t know what to do with the Spirit's role in this story.

But you see, I think the point is that we are beloved children of God. And, with us God is well pleased. But watch out with all that belovedness! That promised Holy Spirit with whose seal we are marked (as Paul tells the Ephesians)- that Holy Spirit will take us to the wilderness where we will meet our own demons. And why? Well, because if you are anything like me, you don’t choose to enter the wilderness on your own.

Most of us don’t normally volunteer for pain, loss, or danger. But the wilderness is still there, in the form of addictions, or toxic relationships, or corrupt governments, or debilitating illnesses, or sudden deaths. You name it! The wilderness will always appear for all of us uninvited and unwelcomed. And it is filled with temptations to become our own gods, to seize control of our lives, to insure ourselves against failure, to go for success at all cause, to conquer the world around us. In doing so we distance ourselves from God, and risk our relationships with creation, with each other, and with ourselves.

The fully human Jesus has come to the full realization of who he is, the road he is to travel, the message he is to proclaim, the mission he is to fulfill- to embody a new way of being in the world, to be a living demonstration of the power of love in action. To prepare for this mission, the Spirit leads him into the wilderness to encounter his own demons. He is "famished" after forty days of fasting. He is at the end of his physical strength, and he is alone. Spiritually, he is struggling to hang onto his identity as the glow of his baptism recedes into the past. And it’s in this state of vulnerability that the tempter comes ready to pull Jesus away from his vocation.

He is tempted as we are tempted. In the wilderness Jesus is tempted to misuse his power to satisfy his hunger; tempted to test God's love for him; tempted to seize and wield power; tempted not to trust in the true power that comes by being in relationship with the one he calls Abba; tempted to become his own god, like Adam and Eve. And the temptations didn’t end after those forty days in the wilderness. Temptations would continue throughout his ministry: the temptation not to take the Jerusalem Road, the temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane to turn aside and not to face the Cross, the temptation to come down from the cross.

Temptations seem to all boil down to some basic categories. None of us has the power to make bread from stones, but we all share the temptation to expect and demand that the rest of the world answer to our immediate needs and wants. This temptation has to do with the illusion that we should never ever be uncomfortable and if we are, it is someone or something else's fault. In the devil’s economy, unmet desire is an aberration, not an integral part of what it means to be human.

Most of us will not find ourselves at the pinnacle of the temple tempted to jump and have angels play catch. But we may be tempted to think that if we just believe hard enough and are good enough, God will keep us protected from all harm. It’s a temptation that targets our deepest fears about what it means to be human in a broken and dangerous world. But, you see, God does not suspend the laws of the universe so that we do not have to live with the consequences of our choices. And if the cross teaches us anything, it is that God’s beloved children bleed, ache, and die. We are loved in our vulnerability, not out of it.

And finally, most of us won’t be offered “all the kingdoms of the world,” if we worship the devil. But if social media and the celebrity phenomena is any indication, we might just be worshiping what ought not be worshiped. It is a temptation that targets our egos. Many these days seek visibility, recognition and a moment in the spotlight, and seek to achieve so by creating new deities and unfortunate set of priorities.

Many of us have given up something for Lent: chocolate, alcohol, Facebook, TV, democratic debates, selfies! The goal is to sit with our hungers, our wants, our desires, and learn what they have to teach us. Can I not get what I want and still live? Can I lack and still live generously without exploiting resources all around me? Who, and where, is God when I am hungry for meaning, or intimacy, or purpose? As we follow Jesus into the desert, we can hear the voice of evil, recognize that we find it alluring, and confess its appeal. Temptation is part of the human condition, and Lent is not a time to do penance for being human.

Perhaps the invitation for this season of Lent can be to lay low where we can discover that we can be human, loved and hungry at the same time. To lay low where we can discover that we can be human and hope and hurt at the same time. To lay low where we can discover that we can be human and vulnerable and beloved at the same time. I want to share with you a new melody by Daniel Schwandt of a Shaker text.

Lay me low, where God can find me;
Lay me low, where God can hold me;
Lay me low, where God can bless me;
Lay me low, God lay me low.

And we can trust that when God blesses us, it won’t be manipulative. And when God nourishes us, it may not necessarily be the food we’d choose for ourselves, but it will feed us. And through us, if we will learn to share, it will feed the world.

¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+