The Day of Pentecost - May 31, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero, OHC

The Day of Pentecost - May 31, 2020

Numbers 11:24-30

Acts 2:1-21
John 20:19-23

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

“When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.” Jump back people! We got violent wind, tongues of fire, and bold preaching! That’s some good stuff!

It was the day of Pentecost, the Festival of Weeks, Shavuot, the Jewish celebration of the first fruits of summer, and the celebration of the giving of the law to Moses at Mount Sinai. Devout Jews are gathered together to celebrate what they believe; that everything we grow and everything we have comes from the hand of God, and the most precious of all is the Torah, the gift of the Law. All are gathered together in one place, and what happens? The Holy Spirit interrupts… a party. 

I can just hear myself: “This is inconsiderate. I know Jesus told us he would send us an advocate, but I mean, he should have given an indication of when this was going to happen so we could be prepared. Seriously, he should have scheduled this with us.” But the Holy Spirit is not concerned with my need for neatness, order, organization and preparation. No, the Spirit shows up when she shows up. Our job is to watch and wait and get moving when it shows. The Holy Spirit interrupts what we know or think we know. And it interrupts violently… with wind… and fire… and Galileans.

If you know me just a little bit, you know that I am going to read this morning’s story from the Acts of the Apostles and the thing that is really going to jump at me is the whole bit about: Are not all these who are speaking in our languages Galileans? … They are filled with new wine. And I can most certainly relate with Peter’s righteous indignation when we stands, raises his voice and says: "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning.”

 

Are not all these Galileans? … Surely they’re drunk. That’s what jumps at me, especially during this past week when I watched in disbelief a video of a white person in Central Park calling the police on a black man who insisted that she abide by the park’s rules and put her dog on a leash. God forbid this black man would challenge her sense of white privilege. “I’m going to call the cops. I’m going to tell them there’s an African-American man threatening my life.” Are not all these Galileans? … Surely they’re drunk. That’s what jumps at me in this reading, especially this past week when I watched, with a certain amount of disturbing numbness, a video of a handcuffed black man face-down on the street pleading for his life because he is struggling to breathe as a white police officer mercilessly presses down on the black man’s neck with his knee until the black man stops breathing. Are not all these African-Americans?... Surely they’re drunk.

Even if we have a hard time with the whole idea of miracle, we can get the whole notion of the Holy Spirit interrupting through wind and fire because we can insert the visuals… but Galileans? It really points to the terrible human propensity to make assumptions based on where someone is from, or what they look like, or where they went to school, or where they work, or how much money they have… 

And what about the assumptions we make in order to distance ourselves from the person to whom we are pointing our finger? The first thing I thought when I watched that video of the white woman calling the cops on the black man was: “She is a racist conservative.” But she is not. She identifies as a progressive who supports progressive causes and supported Obama’s presidential campaign. So much for what I am sure I know and my neatly black and white assumptions! So when I read: Are not all these Galileans?... and my mind translates it to Are not all these Hispanics?... Surely they’re drunk, I know in my heart that I can choose to leave it at the level of my ego, or I can engage in the much harder exercise of taking a hard look at myself and confessing with humility that I too have Galileans of my own. So when the Holy Spirit interrupts violently through wind and fire, oh yes, that is scary. But when the Holy Spirit gets to us through whoever the Galileans are in our life, speaking a language we can understand… what do we do with that?

Christianity is a religion of language. We monks recite and chant psalms full of words throughout the day. In the creation stories of Genesis, God births the very cosmos into existence by speaking: "And God said."  "In the beginning was the Word," we read about the Incarnate Christ in the beautiful prologue of John's gospel. We profess our faith in the language of creeds and prayers and liturgy and music all full of words. And in the Book of Acts, on the day of Pentecost, the disciples were “filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability." 

Those of us who speak more than one language can really understand that language is much more than its grammar, vocabulary, and syntax. A language carries culture, history, psychology, and spirituality. To speak a language other than one’s own native language is to orient oneself differently in the world- to see differently, to hear differently, to process reality differently. To speak across barriers of race, culture, religion, or politics is to challenge stereotype, and to risk sneers, mockery and ridicule. It is a brave and disorienting act.

What language do we really need to be speaking at this moment in time when our nation seems to be growing more and more tribal and even faith communities turn on each other for lack of effort to learn to understand each others language? How can we learn to speak and comprehend each other’s language so that we can experience the limits of our own words and perspectives? How can we learn to speak and comprehend each other’s language so that we can discover that God's deeds are far too great for a single tongue and a single fluency?

O come, Creator Spirit, come and make within our souls your home; grant us your seven-fold gift of grace: wisdom, understanding, counsel, courage, knowledge, godliness, and joyful awareness of your grandeur. O come, Creator Spirit, come and enrich our tongues and speech with grace, that we may all become your prophets able to speak and comprehend languages across barriers of race, culture, religion, or politics. O come, Creator Spirit, come and shed your love in all our heart, that we may all truly become your incarnate Love and the true Body of Christ. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+

The Seventh Sunday of Easter - May 24, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
The Seventh Sunday of Easter - May 24, 2020

Acts 1:6-14
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
John 17:1-11

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

We come to the last Sunday of the Easter Season, the Sunday after Ascension Day, to the peculiar experience of hearing for the third week in a row a reading from the Gospel of John set on the night before the crucifixion. These Farewell Discourse chapters are summary, preparation, and theological reflection on the death/resurrection/ascension singularity. Time becomes something other than a straight line. We have entered a realm where the chronological flow of events is less important than the eternal, ongoing truth and power of the events in the world. The historical and eternal meet and interpenetrate, the chronos time being visited by moments of kairos which change everything. 

According to our calendars, we have come quite a distance since Ash Wednesday on February 26. That date seems like an eternity ago given all that has happened in the last twelve weeks. We go into the wilderness, to the depths of our souls and the nature of our resistance to God so that we may be ready and willing to receive the medicine of salvation freely offered us. We emerge into the glory of the empty tomb and the risen and ascended Christ. The Gospel today ties together these seasons and stories of death and resurrection spanning from those dark, cold days of February (when I actually physically touched people’s forehead’s with ashes) to today. The mystery of life, death, and resurrection cycles and tumbles through our lives just as in the Gospel of John where Jesus is always the crucified, risen, and glorified One even in his earthly ministry, even, we might say, from before the foundation of the world.

All of that is context to the verses I would like to focus on this morning. Verses 9 and 10 say this,

“I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.”

Jesus speaks here of the communion between Father and Son, and elsewhere in the Farewell Discourse of the coming of the Holy Spirit. In the discourse as a whole, the life of the Trinity is always described as relational, the persons are distinct yet in and for one another. The Trinity is not an abstract idea for examination or a closed circle beyond us. The unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the source of our being and the model of our life with God and one another. The relationship between Son and Father is not, thankfully, “on behalf of those who have been chosen over others; on behalf of those who are good enough…” But rather because of and out of their relationship we are brought into being, and by being we belong and are being given in belonging. The only qualification needed is that you are here. The belonging is inherent in our souls by awakening to its presence.

And then “I have been glorified in them.” Here is a union, fusion, participation in the dignity of each human being in the eternal and everlasting unfolding of the love and grace of God to and in all things. Our human life is the context within which the glorification of Christ is an ongoing incarnation of perfect union and utter self-giving love. The ever-being-revealed radiant being and presence of Christ is ongoing within us. That is the essence of the meaning of our human lives – to be an incarnation of the glory – that is, the perfect union and utter self-giving love of the Son in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In the context of the Upper Room, the soon coming arrest and execution, Jesus has little time and does not waste words. The imminence of death has a way of focusing thoughts and words to what is essential. Jesus urgently wants the disciples to be so rooted and grounded in their identity as belonging to the Trinity, that nothing will shake their belief. What is it that Jesus leaves the disciples as the Last Word, the final echo of his voice before the Passion? The glory of the Son from the Father lives on in us as individuals and community.

All of this theology is lovely, but the reason Jesus is talking this way is to inform our lives from the inside out. Living as the one in whom Christ is being glorified is the heart of the Christian vocation. Christ glorified in us is the conversion from self-will to detachment. The desire for our own glory is the source of sin and distorts and warps our identity. Detachment is knowing the difference between my glory and Christ’s glory. Christ’s glory is not about control, power, dictating the future. The allowing of Christ’s glory, the surrendering of my will to power, orients my vocation to what is ultimate and eternal. Whenever I assert my self-will, I embrace the illusion that I am independent and can separate myself from belonging to the Holy Trinity.

In A Letter of Consolation, Henri Nouwen writes to his father six months after the death of his mother on the relationship between autonomy and detachment. He is seeking to distinguish between a passive resignation and an active surrender in the spiritual life. He writes,

“It [autonomy] is the option to understand our experience of powerlessness as an experience of being guided, even when we do not know exactly where… We can see that a growing surrender to the unknown is a sign of spiritual maturity and does not take away autonomy… I am constantly struck by the fact that those who are most detached from life, those who have learned through living that there is nothing and nobody in this life to cling to, are the really creative people. They are free to move constantly away from the familiar, safe places and can keep moving forward to new unexplored areas of life.”

Even the holy possessiveness of the Trinity has a detachment that possesses and at the same time freely gives to the other.

We can hear these words of Jesus in a fresh way as we are in our own urgent time. We are in need of being rooted in what is meaningful and lasting. Our lives reflect and participate in this mystery. In aging and ultimately our own death, we live in the hope of the promise of resurrection. That hope amplifies and enriches the present moment because eternal life is now and we are preparing, storing up treasure for what awaits us. St. Benedict counsels us to live with the end in mind: “remember that you are going to die”, he says in the Rule. Like John’s bending of time, it is difficult to understand how to “remember” something that is in the future. St. Benedict is inviting us to look forward to the day when there are no more denominations, church buildings, monasteries – when the containers are gone, having been replaced by the eternal presence of the thing these structures signify and toward which they point. The expectation of fulfillment in a world where only our acts of love remain from all our days helps us hold loosely what is useful and necessary, but is still passing away. The externals are given to us to teach us the way of love.

Lately I have been in mind of Mary Oliver’s famous poetic question;

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

Well, Mary, “I plan to live it, and then to lay it at the feet of the One who made me and to whom I belong.” The prayer Jesus prayer for the disciples, praying even now for us, imagines what might happen when we are welcomed into heaven. “Tell me”, Christ will say, “did you live, did you enjoy the wild and precious gift I gave you of being alive and being you? Did you enjoy sharing my glory – in all the joys and sorrows, gifts and losses – as much as I enjoyed creating you?” Amen.

Ascension Day - May 21, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Rev. Matthew Wright
Ascension Day - May 21, 2020

Acts 1:1-11
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-53

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

Up, up, and away! Today, 40 days after Easter, we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension of Jesus, when, as our reading from the Acts of the Apostles put it, he “was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” Some of you here, I'm sure, have seen the von Kulmbach painting at the Met in which the awestruck disciples stand looking up and all we and they can see are Jesus' feet sticking down, dangling through the clouds, as he is taken up, up, and away.

von Kulmbach, "The Ascension of Christ"

Admittedly, the Ascension is one of those scriptural stories that many of us don’t know much what to make of anymore. Did Jesus really fly up into the clouds? Is this something we're supposed to or should believe? It seems, of course, like this story was written with a pretty simplistic, three-tiered understanding universe in mind—earth in the middle, hell down below us, and heaven somewhere up above the clouds. And for Jesus to get back home to God the Father, well... he had to go up, up, and away. But this past Sunday St. Paul reminded us that God is the One “in whom we live and move and have our being,” not so much “up” as “everywhere.”

And today, knowing as we do that the world is round, we also know the relativity of that word “up.” Living on a round planet, the direction all of us point for “up” is the exact opposite of someone living on the other side of the world. And we also know that if you travel up through the clouds and enter into space that you can keep on going for light-years upon light-years. As the Anglican theologian Keith Ward puts it, “We now know that, if [Jesus] began ascending two thousand years ago, he would not yet have left the Milky Way (unless he attained warp speed).”

And so, what does the Ascension of Jesus mean for us today, knowing all that we know? How are we to understand this story? Well, interestingly, Luke is the only author to give us an actual account of the Ascension, and most scholars think he was writing around A.D. 80 or 90, 50 or 60 years after Jesus' death and resurrection, and he tells the story twice, in slightly different versions—once in his Gospel and once again in The Acts of the Apostles. In the Gospel, he places the Ascension fairly quickly after the resurrection appearances; it seems like maybe just a day or two after Easter.

In his second work though, The Acts of the Apostles, he places the Ascension exactly “forty days” after Easter—and as you know, “forty” is a biblically symbolic number used to indicate a period of fullness or completion—in the days of Noah, it rained for “40 days and 40 nights”; Moses was atop Mount Sinai for “40 days and forty nights”; and Jesus fasted for “40 days” in the wilderness.

And so the 40 days here is a clear tip-off that this narrative is symbolic; it gave Luke a dramatic way of closing his account of the Resurrection appearances. But other authors in the New Testament—in fact, all of the other authors in the New Testament—don’t seem to have understood the resurrection of Jesus and his ascension as two separate events. Paul tells us simply that Jesus was “raised to the right hand of God”—as if resurrection and ascension are one and the same divine act, facets of a single mystery. Jesus was raised into the power of God, and it is from there that he then appears to his disciples.

Theologian Samuel Zinner even talks about what he calls the "Good Friday Singularity" in which Jesus' death on the Cross, his resurrection and ascension, and even the outpouring of the Holy Spirit are understood as a single multifaceted mystery that is then segmented and unfolded narratively and liturgically. He notes the way some of our early texts seem to still hold some of these facets together; in the Letter to the Hebrews (10:12), for example, we're told that "when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God," implying a simultaneity—when he offers himself in death, he sits down at God's right hand—these the two side of a single movement.

Similarly in the First Letter of Peter (3:18) we're told that Jesus was "put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit"—again as a simultaneous movement. And this is very much the case in the Gospel of John in which Jesus' raising up on the cross is his glorification by God, his enthronement at God's right hand. And it's also here in John's Gospel that Zinner says we can see the mystery of Pentecost present at the Cross; John says that on the Cross Jesus "released" or "handed over" the Spirit; not "his spirit" as we sometimes translate the text, but literally in Greek "the Spirit."

And so from the standpoint of eternity, we can see Jesus' death and descent, resurrection and ascent, and the Spirit's outpouring as one unitive mystery that is then unfolded in time—and for Luke, living in a three-tiered universe, also unfolded spatially by sending Jesus up, up, and away. But today we might better understand Jesus' Ascension as his movement not to a higher but to a deeper dimension of reality. St. Paul had a very subtle understanding of the Ascension: he says in the Letter to the Ephesians that Jesus “was raised far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things” (Eph. 4:10). He is raised above everything in order to fill everything.

And so, in his Ascension, Jesus doesn’t go further away from us, but instead becomes infinitely and intimately closer to everything. The entire mystery of Jesus present in every point of reality, and that entire mystery present in a single point. In being raised on the Cross, he also descends into hell; in being raised on the Cross, he ascends and is enthroned at the right hand of God; in being raised on the Cross, he pours out the Spirit. In being raised on the Cross, far above all the heavens, he now fills all things. And yet this singular, simultaneous, unified mystery is too much to be born by a single moment in time or comprehended in a single day, and so mercifully it is unfolded for us in time and in space.

And today, we gaze on just one facet of that mystery: the one we call Ascension. But as we gaze with the disciples, up, up, and away, our gaze is redirected. We're told that as they stood looking up, two men in white robes appeared and said to them, "Why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” Why do you stand looking up? He will come again in the same way as you saw him go. How did he go? From below—from here, from the world. And he will come again in the same way, they say—not from heaven down, but once again, from the earth up. If you stand looking up, up, and away, you'll miss him.

He came the first time through the womb of Mary, the womb of life, the womb of the Earth. He will come again in the same way. So often we think of the "Second Coming" of Jesus as Jesus crashing down out of the clouds. But the angels here tell us we've got it all wrong. Don't look up. Don't you know he will come again as he did before?—from the womb of your life? Don't you know that, ascended, he now fills all things?

And we don't, and so mercifully the singular mystery is unfolded for us in time; we're given time to adjust to what has all happened in a moment. Ten days, in fact, before the next facet of this singular mystery is revealed at Pentecost. Ten days to learn to redirect our gaze from up, to down, to within and all around us.

There's a story told about a failing monastery that once had been grand, with regularly dozens of vocations coming in, but it had dwindled down to five remaining brothers, who expected they would be the ones to close the doors. But one day as the Abbot was visiting with his old friend, the town rabbi, the rabbi confided in him that it had been revealed to him that the Messiah had come as one of the brothers in his very monastery, but he could not reveal who it was.

Well the abbot was astounded, and he thought well certainly it isn't me. But he went back and told his brothers what the rabbi has said. And they all began to wonder—could it be Br. Aelred? He is pretty crotchety, but he's also very wise. Or maybe Br. Thomas—he's not very smart, but he is one of the kindest people we know. And so on. And as they began to treat each other with a newfound love and reverence —because, any one of them might be the Messiah—the townspeople found themselves drawn once again to the monastery. There was lightness in the air there. And vocations began to grow, and the community once again flourished. And truly, the Messiah had come again among them.

As we enter these ten days of Ascensiontide, and begin to redirect our gaze—remember, one of you, one of you, is the Messiah! All of you, for he now fills all things. Why do you look up to heaven? Don't you know that he will come again in the same way as before? And so may we find him here and now, risen and ascended, in this gathered community, and in the whole of creation.

Amen.

The Sixth Sunday of Easter - May 17, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. John Forbis, OHC
The Sixth Sunday of Easter - May 17, 2020

Acts 17:22-31
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

Oh no, he said it!  He really said it!  How many times in my growing up and even into adulthood have I heard these words: “If you love me, you would do what I want?!?!”  For me, punishment is almost easier to swallow than such a manipulation.  But is Jesus really saying the same thing, with the same coercion?  Well … yes and no.

First of all, to get technical, there is a subtle change in verb tenses here.  Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”  And later in this passage he comes full circle to say, “Those who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me.”  Yes, he expects his disciples to back up their declaration of love with action, but he uses the future tense, not the conditional.  He makes this statement almost as a foregone conclusion; a fact, or a promise.

What if Jesus’ promise of having and keeping his commandments is less about “toeing the line” as a burden and more about devoting one’s attention and energy toward them?  Jesus’ commandments are so much more than commands.

Toeing the line is a product of a very different mindset.  In a world of “if you love me, you would do what I want,” where someone has to be guilty, everyone is the accused and accuser.  Satan is judge, and we’re all condemned.

Jesus doesn’t want victims or accusers, but followers, followers who freely and actively participate in and commit to Jesus’ commandments, to enter into God’s heart.  There’s no expectation that we have to toe the line as if to earn God’s love or prove our love for God.  Perhaps that’s the kind of “unknown god” to which the Athenians built a shrine and whom we worship so easily, groping for perfection, our idol of gold, silver or stone.  God’s love is unconditional.  We put conditions on love.

God does not need to live in our shrines made by human hands.   All God needs is to give – “to all mortals life and breath and all things” and most of all His living Grace.  If we have to have proof of this, we only need to look to Jesus, his life and ministry and his Commandments, which are all summarized in one commandment:  To love one another as Christ loves us.  He’s asking us to commit to a new Creation in which love is the driving agent, not power or domination.  This Creation is abundant life, immersed in loving God because God first loved us.  The God in whom we live, move and have our being is the source of our love.  This love is God’s gift to us.

Leave it to me to fixate on the opening sentence and hear it as Jesus is sending me on a guilt trip.  Maybe I hear it that way because it distracts me from the responsibility and challenge of love.  I’m engaged where I fail, not who I can and am called to be.  It’s easier to feel I am either a convicted criminal or an accuser.       

As we learned last week, the disciples are listening to this man whom God has appointed and not really understanding a word he’s saying.  Thomas needs to know the way to where Jesus is going.  Jesus points to himself.  Philip needs to see the Father.  Again, Jesus responds, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip and you still don’t know the Father?”

When Jesus is arrested later that night, one disciple betrays him, another denies him three times and the rest scatter.  So Jesus’ promise hardly seems possible, that they will keep his commandments.

But, Jesus talks about another Advocate, which suggests that he is the first Advocate.  This man who will judge the world in righteousness is also a Defense Attorney.  He judges by defending others, but not himself.  His silence at his trial frustrates and baffles Pilate to the point where all he can do to make peace is to turn him over to the crowds who crucify this innocent victim.  This Judge, Defense Attorney becomes the accused so that the world order of accuser and accused is rendered indefensible.  His death on the Cross is the defense for us when we’re put on trial and against us when we put others on trial.  This is Christ’s courtroom.  He can do anything he wants here.  He is judge and the defense.  In this courtroom, mercy prevails. 

Then, he offers more promises.  He will ask the Father, and the Father will give you another Advocate.  A defense lawyer even when we’ve fallen short of Jesus’ commandments to love one another as he has loved us.  We’re neither accuser nor accused.  We are just an unknown God’s offspring, a God who loves us, whom we search for and perhaps grope for him and find him.

How do we find him?  The Second Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, that the world doesn’t know or see and can’t receive.  We know him.  “He abides with you and he will be in you.”  We have the Spirit with us right now before as well as after Pentecost.  This Spirit shows God “who is not far from each one of us”, even now in our isolation, fear and confusion.

With the Spirit of Truth with us and in us, we are not left orphaned.  We see Jesus.  Jesus is alive.  He still even now enters through our locked doors, our lockdown.  We are in union with God.  “I am in my Father, and you in me and I in you.”  All the promises are assured because of this fusion.  Jesus is raised from the dead.  Truth does not end with death.

Another promise is that we will know this.  Thus, we can be assured of the first promise:  If you love me, you will keep my commandments … Those who love me will keep my commandments, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, I will love them and reveal myself to them.”  Being alive in Christ, how could we not keep Jesus’ commandments?  We know from where they come.  We know to where they go.  Besides, the Spirit of Truth, the Defense Attorney, can teach us how to be Defense Attorneys to each other when we fall short of loving as Jesus loves.    

The Fifth Sunday of Easter - May 10, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Rev. Cari Pattison
The Fifth Sunday of Easter - May 10, 2020

Acts 7:55-60
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

Let your good news come, Lord, not only in word but in power, in the Holy Spirit and with full assurance. Amen.

Maybe it’s because I’m from Kansas, where the “Wizard of Oz” is our formative myth -- but I love the idea of a way. A path to follow that leads to answers. A yellow brick road that is bright and shiny and easy to see, and leads to that which we most desire- a brain, a heart, some courage, and ultimately- home.

Perhaps it is this founding mythology that partly informed my decision to hike the Appalachian Trail last year. The idea of backpacking 2200 miles from Georgia to Maine lodged itself deep in my imagination and would not let go until I set foot on Springer Mountain. So with my over-stuffed pack and not-so-broken-in shoes, I set out on a journey, in some sense to find my way in the uncertain land of mid-life.

In today’s Gospel text, Jesus does not point to a new spiritual road or a magical map to heaven. He simply says that he is the way. The way that leads not to all the answers or to everything our hearts desire- but the way that leads to truth, and life.

But first there is trouble. It is trouble, after all, in the form of a tornado that sweeps up Dorothy Gale and lands her in a place she never intended to be. And there will be trouble along that yellow road- trees throwing apples, mischievous flying monkeys, sedating poppies, and of course a wicked witch.

The trouble Jesus speaks of in today’s text refers to the disturbed look on his disciples’ faces. He has just told them that one of them will betray him, another will deny him, and worst of all, he is about to leave them.

We keep hearing and reading the phrase lately, “In these uncertain times…”

I can’t help but think that yesterday, the snow falling on newly blooming lilacs in May, was a visual illustration of the strangeness of these times. We wonder, “What season are we in?”

Jesus and his disciples know uncertain times.

In the midst of foretelling their failures and of his own looming departure, Jesus says these words often heard at funerals:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. There are plenty of dwellings in my Father’s house and I’m getting one ready for you. I’m going to come for you, and you know the way to where I am going.”

Philip raises his hand and asks the question on all of their minds, “Lord, we don’t even know where you’re going, so how on earth can we know the way?”

I recall times on the Appalachian Trail last spring when we accidentally took the wrong way. Lost in thought and conversation we followed my friend’s dog, a wonderful border collie mix named Blue, instead of the white blazes that kept us on the AT. She was such a fearless leader for our trail family that we forgot that she did not in fact know the way. She was driven by her sense of smell, usually toward something dead in the woods.

Another time early on in Georgia we got distracted when we left camp in the morning. Intent on doing our first 15-mile day, we made it a mile and a half down the trail before some fellow hikers crossed our path and asked, “Oh, are you south-bounders?” No, we answered. We’re headed to Maine. “Well you’re headed in the wrong direction!” they said.

It can be hard to know the way.

It is hard to know the way right now.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus says.

But there is much to be troubled about.

Already over a quarter of a million people have died of Covid-19 worldwide. Unemployment rates are the highest they’ve been since the Great Depression, domestic violence and mental health problems are increasing by the day, and many of the effects of social distancing pose risk factors for substance abuse and even suicide.

We see pictures of New York City and that first verse of Lamentations rings eerily true: “How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks… she has no one to comfort her.”

It is unimaginable to think that so many of those 250,000 deaths were people dying alone in a hospital bed with no family, friends, or priest allowed to be by their side.

In the midst of the political blaming and hand-wringing and looking to experts for guidance, we wait. We wait for a definitive word on antibody tests and vaccines. We wait for permission to re-open and come out of quarantine. We wait to hug those we love. In the meantime we look for ways to keep one another safe and healthy, for constructive ways to give and help.

Still we find ourselves echoing some version of Philip’s question: “Lord, what do we do? Where are you going? How can we know the way?”

Many have cried out this week, “Come, Lord Jesus,” in the face of a the brutal murder of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery. Ahmaud, doing his regular work-out jog, was a young man shot essentially for “running while black.”

We cry out not only at the horror and injustice of this loss of life, but at the racism stuck in the marrow of this nation’s bones: that the two men now charged with the killing were considered justified and allowed to live free for the past two months- even after authorities saw the video of what happened.

We wonder how many other black lives have been shot down and gone unnoticed? How long, O Lord, will this kind of white prejudice and panic persist?

We echo a version of Thomas’s request:

God, show yourself - show us what to do - and may we never be satisfied as long as your children of color, created in your image, are anything less than fully free.

Do not let your hearts be troubled, Jesus says.

And yet there is much to be troubled about.

Sometimes we as Christian community, need to feel the full weight of the psalmist’s words in the one psalm - 88 - that does not end on a note of hope:

“My soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.”

But the promise of the Gospel here, if I understand it, is that Jesus will not leave us there.

He is going to prepare a place - not just in the heavenly realms - but with him here and now. Jesus says he will bring us to himself. He is here to show us the Father Mother Creator God in the flesh.

In all the works the disciples have seen him do thus far - the water into wine, the Samaritan woman befriended, the officer’s son healed, the crowds of people fed, the blind man given sight, the walking on the water, and the raising of Lazarus - Jesus shows them who God is.

Jane Yarmolinsky writes,

“The whole concept of God taking on human shape, and all the liturgy and ritual around that, had never made any sense to me. That was because, I realized one day, it was so simple. For people with bodies, important things like love have to be embodied. God had to be embodied, or else people with bodies would never in a trillion years understand about love.”

And yet now we live in a time when we cannot connect in the same embodied way we used to. One woman on Zoom retreat with us this week said, “I just need a hug.” As Brother Robert said yesterday - the absence of touch and hugs and handshakes - “is so loud.”

And so maybe we need this word more than ever: That Jesus is the way that leads to truth and life. That he never intended this word to be an exclusionary statement about other faiths, but rather a word of intimate encouragement to his closest friends:

“I know your hearts are troubled. I know these are confusing and frightening times. But I will be your way, your truth, and your life.” Follow this road. Stay on this trail.

Six times in this passage Jesus tells us to believe, to trust in what we have experienced of Jesus, and to go and do works like he did. To embody God’s love to the world. To be agents of welcome, healing, feeding, giving, teaching, comfort, and restoration.

In a time like pandemic, writes Richard Rohr, we are reminded of the African concept of Ubuntu - that “I am because we are.” That we cannot begin to address the pain of our world unless we do it with a heart for one another.

Not unlike Dorothy, our world is swept up in a cyclone of confusion and destruction. There is sickness in body and in bigotry. There is struggle in the climate, in the economy, and in our souls.

Jesus says into all this, “I am coming. I will bring you to me. I will be your way.”

Like the road leading to Oz and the trail leading to Maine, I sometimes wish the way were always clearer and smooth and easy to follow.

But Jesus’ way is the one that leads to a cross. We will not be able to traverse the terrain of our time without the One who is well acquainted with suffering. We will not be able to go it alone, and we will not be able to follow his way without sacrifice.

In closing, I share a story that has been on my heart this week. Not as an example that would lead us to take risks that might endanger our health and the health of others, but as an illustration that might prompt us to pray. That God might show us how to creatively love our neighbor in a time like this.

The story is told of two soldiers during World War I:

Joseph and Jim were lifelong friends and served alongside each other in battle. Outnumbered and suffering heavy casualties, the commander ordered a retreat.

When the company got to safe ground, Jim noticed his friend, Joe, was not with them. He went to the commander and asked permission to go back and look for him.

The commander disapproved, saying that under heavy fire of the enemy, Jim would surely be killed. He told him they would recover the bodies when it was safer to do so.

Jim apologized before he disobeyed the order and ran back to the battlefield.

Minutes later he came back carrying Joe’s dead body. As he lay him down, the company saw that Jim himself was badly wounded now.

The commander was furious: “I told you he would have been killed in the firefight. You foolishly endangered yourself, and now I risk losing another man. What a waste!”

But Jim, now fighting for his own life, calmly spoke to the commander,

“Sir, it was not a waste. When I got to Joe he was still alive. I held him up and propped him on my lap, telling him to hold on. As he gasped for breath, his last and only words were these:

‘I knew you would come.’”

* * * *

Jesus, you are the one
who comes for us,
and keeps coming,
no matter the cost.

Grant us wisdom
and courage
for the facing of this hour -

that we might believe
and live the kind of lives
that show your love
to a hurting world.

Come, our way,
our truth,
our life.

Amen.

The Fourth Sunday of Easter - May 3, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Aidan Owen, OHC
The Fourth Sunday of Easter - May 3, 2020

Acts 2:42-47
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

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

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

Yes, four weeks in, and it’s still Easter. Thank God.

This Easter may be more like the first Easter than any I can remember. Like the disciples, most of us weren’t able to gather around a Pascal fire to mark the Queen of Feasts. The threats that surround us, and our fear of our own exposure and death have kept us huddled indoors, like those first followers of Jesus. And, like them, many of us Christians may feel defeated, lost, anxious, and angry. Or perhaps we’re unutterably tired and can’t be bothered to work up an Alleluia.

We also, like those early disciples, have the sense that something is forever different, though we don’t know yet what that something is.

Many of our religious authorities, even in so-called “mainstream” Christianity, have sold their souls to the emperor for political gain. Sin and death, nationalism and racism, lies and corruption rule the society in which we live.

This is the context now, as it was then, and, frankly, as it has always been, for the good, improbable, and astounding news that yes, Jesus Christ is risen. Yes, he is risen here, now, and forever. God has already won her victory over the forces of evil, division, and death and has opened the way to abundant life for all of creation.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve heard stories of the first disciples’ encounters with the risen Lord. These encounters lay a foundation for a life lived in the fullness of Christ, a life transformed by God’s promise to bring life out of death. This week, the lections move us from encounter to integration and begin to show us what the resurrected life actually looks like in practice. And what it looks like is sheep.

I would so much rather the resurrected life look like clever crows, beautiful foxes, or fierce wolves. But it would seem God is not nearly as interested as I am in my beauty, cleverness, or courage. In fact, God doesn’t seem to be too interested in my my at all. And that’s one of the lessons of the sheep.

You see, sheep have two defining virtues: their unity with one another and their unity with their shepherd. Sheep huddle together and move as one body. Although individuals have personality, they don’t embody their individuality at the expense of the unity of the flock. In fact, as with bees or forests, it really doesn’t make sense to speak of a single sheep. A flock of sheep is what biologists call a superorganism, a group of individuals who are so in sync with one another that you can only truly speak of the collective as one being made up of many persons.

With sheep, as with bees, that one being—the flock—responds to one other being—the shepherd. And basically to no one or nothing else. Sure, they might collectively run from perceived threats. But they don’t follow anyone or anything but the shepherd. Over time sheep become so attuned to the shepherd that they know his voice. They run to him, follow him, respond to him.

I’ll admit, it’s not a very subtle metaphor. But like the disciples to whom Jesus is speaking, as obvious as the image is, we don’t get it. Or, we don’t get it on a level that moves us to embody it. None of is born or raised a sheep. At the best of times we’re all really wolves, crows, or foxes in sheep’s clothing, trying our best to follow God’s voice, all the while distracted and torn by our various cravings, fears, and hopes.

It isn’t just our cravings, of course, that complicate our integration into the sheepfold. One of the greatest hurdles to transformation in Christ, is our earnest and real desire to be humble and good and to love and follow God. Hidden in this desire for goodness in its various forms, is usually the belief that our goodness will finally complete us. And that, once we‘re complete, we won’t need God anymore. We secretly believe that if we love God, if we strive for goodness and humility, we will get to be perfect versions of ourselves. And that system of belief and striving is one of the subtlest and most insidious kinds of idolatry, and one to which religious folks are particularly vulnerable.

Jesus himself reminds us that only God is good. God is the source and the terminus of all goodness. Whatever is good or true or beautiful in this world is a reflection of God’s beauty, God’s goodness, God’s truth. All our effort to claim that goodness for our own is vanity and pride.

Really, it’s fear. Fear that, if we aren’t good we aren’t anything at all. And fear, too, that God’s promise to bring life from death may not really be true, after all.

Dame Julian captures this dynamic when she writes that

“some of us believe that God is all powerful and may do everything; and that he is all wise and can do everything; but as for believing that he is all love and will [emphasis mine] do everything, there we hold back. In my view nothing hinders God’s lovers more than the failure to understand this.”¹

Our hope in the midst of the darkness that surrounds us today must be in God’s goodness alone. By our own power, we can only, at best, create a kind of resuscitation of the old life we knew. Only God can bring forth from death the life that really is life.

The image of the sheepfold, following the loving voice of its shepherd, is an image of the new creation, of humanity as fully and finally redeemed, brought forth into a new innocence. This innocence is not that of Eden, of those who have never known sin and death and fear. But rather of those who have sinned and died again and again and again, and have, through the mercy and goodness of God, been reborn. It is an innocence that is genuinely wise and humble, because it knows that not only is God all-powerful and all-wise, but that God is also all love, continually shepherding us to new and deeper life.

Julian concludes her thoughts in this passage by saying that “As by his courtesy God forgives our sins when we repent, even so he wills that we [emphasis mine] should forgive our sins; and so give up our senseless worrying and faithless fear.”²

And who knows? In the end, perhaps, we will not all be sheep, for as Isaiah tells us, the wolf and the lion shall lie down with the kid. If for now we remain crows and foxes and wolves, dressed in sheep’s clothing or not, so be it. In God’s own time and in God’s own way we will be reborn into whatever  we truly are. And then we will hear our shepherd calling us each by our true name.

For this much is certain. God is good and that is everything.

And yes, Christ is risen! Alleluia!


1. As quoted in Robert Llewelyn, All Shall Be Well, p. 9.
2. Ibid., p. 10.