Christmas Day - December 25, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC

Christmas Day - Saturday, December 25, 2022

Isaiah 9:2-7

Titus 2:11-14

Luke 2:1-14(15-20)

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The shepherds went with haste to Mary and Joseph and told them what the angel had said to them about this child:

“Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” Luke 2:10-11

Today Bethlehem is more than a geographic location in Palestine. Today Bethlehem is within us. Both are situated amidst hope and joy, sorrow and loss, conflict and violence, healing and reconciliation. The older I get and the more I experience the beauty and pain of life, the more I want to live the Christmas story in this time and in this place. The story that matters and makes a difference is whether Jesus has been born again in us today.

 

What good is it to us if the angel announces good news of great joy to the shepherds if that good news is not also announced to us in our lives? What good is it to us if the shepherds go see this thing that has taken place if we do not also see it? What good is it if Mary treasures and ponders how these things can be if we do not also wonder at the mystery of God-with-us? What good is it if Jesus is laid in a manger in Bethlehem if he is not also cradled in the manger of our heart where God’s life and our life intersect. 

Today the manger of our humanity is filled with divinity. 

Once the shepherds leave having told Mary and Joseph what the angel said, there is only silence.  Neither of them say a word. Maybe that’s how it should be. Both had their lives ruptured by angelic encounters.  Gabriel’s encounter with Mary at the Annunciation and Joseph’s encounter with him in a dream don’t lead them out of doubt and into faith. Their encounter with the angel leads them out of certainty and into a holy bewilderment. Out of familiar spiritual territory and into a lifetime of pondering, wondering, questioning, and wrestling. 

Like Mary and Joseph, many of us were raised with a precise and comprehensive picture of who God is and how God operates in the world. Who knew that our life with God would be to shed our neat conceptions of the divine and emerge into the world vulnerable, and new, again and again?

 This, of course, is what Mary and Joseph had to do in the aftermath of their angelic encounters. They had to consent to evolve. To wonder. To stretch. They had to learn that faith and doubt are not opposites—that beyond all the easy platitudes of religion, we serve a God who dwells in mystery. If we agree to embark on a journey with this God, we too will face periods of bewilderment. This can frighten us as it did them and tempt us to try to hold our relationship with God at a sanitized distance from our actual circumstances. Such efforts leave us with a faith that’s rigid and inflexible. It’s when our inherited beliefs collide with the messy circumstances of our lives that we go from a two-dimensional faith to one that is vibrant and alive.

Silent treasuring and pondering are how we begin to make meaning of Jesus’ birth beyond an historical fact or doctrinal belief. We don’t need more facts or information. It’s a time to move from the event of Christmas to the meaning of Christmas. Making meaning is not so much about explaining, understanding, or analyzing. Treasuring and pondering are the work of the heart--- to interiorize the reality of God-with-us. Not a concept to be explained but a truth to be lived. Only we can encounter the treasure his birth holds for us. Only our pondering can reveal the things about him, us, and our life together. We don’t need to be afraid to go to that place, to become intimate with our own experiences, even our mistakes, and learn from them. God hides in the depths, even the depths of our sins. We humans crave meaning. We need to make meaning and allow Jesus to give meaning to our lives. We need to ponder and open ourselves to what this birth might mean for our life today. By it, God is inviting us to inhabit the fullness of our humanity.

Despite the way our culture markets Christmas, it is not an escape from real life. The point of the incarnation is that Jesus is one with us in the ordinary. The “good news of great joy” is announced in the ups and downs, frustrations and celebrations, joys and sorrows, of life. The birth that interrupted and called the shepherds away is also the birth that returned them to their fields and flocks. They carried the birth of Jesus back within them. Their fields and flocks were not different, but they were. Like the shepherds we must leave the scene of the nativity, the event of Christmas, and return to the fields of our lives---to the ordinary and the routine, the familiar daily work, and worries. That’s where we will ponder and treasure God’s embodiment of our humanity. That’s where we will glorify and praise God for all we have heard and seen. That’s where all of life and creation are made holy in the joining together of heaven and earth, divinity and humanity, spirit and matter. 

Every year I come to this feast wanting one thing---- to be reminded of the truth of the angel’s words, so that I can rely on this birth in my life and in our world which aches to hear the good news of great joy that can overcome our many divisions. I think deep down that’s what we all want. This manger holds the Creator of us all. Every aspect of our lives, and all of creation are cradled in Him. Today the Creator is born and by that birth we, the created, are offered the gift to be reborn.

+ Amen.

Advent 4 A - December 18, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

Advent 4 A - December 18, 2022

Isaiah 7:10-16

Romans 1:1-7

Matthew 1:18-25

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Br. Robert Leo Sevensky's
paternal great grandparents -
parents of grandfather Barney

IIf you didn't know better, you might think that today's gospel reading is the beginning of Matthew's good news. But it isn't. Seventeen verses precede it, verses we almost never hear read in church and certainly never on a Sunday, though we did in fact hear a brief section read at yesterday’s Eucharist. And that, to me, is regrettable if understandable. Because those seventeen verses are, as the first verse says: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of

David, the son of Abraham.” 

This is followed by fifteen verses filled with names that are almost unpronounceable. The passage begins by reminding us that: “Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zereh by Tamar…” and on and on, forty-two generations from Abraham down to Joseph the husband of Mary. But these verses are not unimportant for they set the story of Jesus in context and help us to understand who he is and how he came to be who he is for us. These verses, this genealogy, places Jesus directly in the Davidic royal lineage, the lineage from which the Messiah was to come. And as we know, for Matthew it is the messiahship of Jesus which is central to understanding his person and his power.

There has been a lot of interest lately in genealogy. The TV show Roots on PBS remains very popular as celebrities are introduced to distant and previously unknown ancestors. Ancestry.com has allowed many of us to become amateur genealogists. And DNA testing has allowed people to trace the long history of their ancestry as revealed in their cellular structure. It's all pretty fascinating.

During the recent COVID pandemic some of these ancestry tools were made available free of charge through the local public library system. I took a stab at trying to clarify something of my own family history. I was not very successful, however, and my family lineage remains rather short, essentially going back to grandparents and no farther. But just last week my cousin Paul sent me photos of my great grandparents, the parents of my father's father who himself died in 1925. I had never seen pictures of them before and never knew that any existed.

There was certainly nothing remarkable about the photos or the people pictured it in them. They both looked dour, a bit stern, and somewhat down at the heels as I would expect of immigrant laborers from Eastern Europe in the 1880s. But it was fascinating to me none the less. I studied the photos searching for family esemblances and traits. Can I learn anything about myself by looking at this photo of two strangers about whom I know virtually nothing but who paradoxically are part of my history and who to some degree, however small, shape who I am today? I think that's why most people are interested at some level in their genealogy. It's not because it will reveal some exotic past, even though we might hope otherwise, but that it helps us in some small way to understand who we are today.

I think the same dynamic is operative in those first seventeen verses of Matthew's gospel which offer us a genealogy of sorts of Jesus of Nazareth, the Anointed One, the Messiah. And there are several interesting characteristics of this genealogy.

First, it is not exactly historically accurate. It is rather a fanciful or idealized genealogy, nicely divided into three groups of fourteen generations, each group populating a certain era in the history of Israel. And it reminds us, if we need such reminding, that Jesus is the fruit of a long historical process at the heart of the Jewish story. It may not historically accurate. But that may not be its point at all nor its importance for us this morning.

As I mentioned before, this genealogy establishes the royal messianic line right down to Joseph: “…the husband of Mary of whom Jesus was born who was called the Messiah.” This is not so much an historical claim as it is a theological one.

And like most genealogies, the one that Matthew offers us contains some surprises and perhaps even some cautions. Jewish genealogies were generally patrilineal, as this one is, tracing ancestry through the male parent. But there are five women mentioned in this list, and as a footnote in my Bible says of these five women: “…each acted independently, in some cases scandalously, at critical junctures in Israel’s history to ensure the continuation of the Davidic line.” And they are quite a controversial group indeed. There is Tamar, a gentile, who use subterfuge to conceive and bear. There is Rehab, a gentile and a prostitute, who hid Joshua’s spies and insured victory over Jericho. There is Ruth, a gentile and grandmother of King David who refused to go back to her gentile world and chose rather to be incorporated into the Hebrew people. There is Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, a gentile who, depending on how you read the story, is either an adulteress or a woman sexually exploited by a powerful ruler. And lastly there is Mary, definitely not a gentile, but unmarried and pregnant and not by her betrothed. In truth Joseph's genealogy--and by extension Jesus’-- is as messy or messier than yours or mine. Yet look what God did with it and through it.

Finally, and it's easy to miss this in our English translations, the word genealogy in Greek is the word genesis which is, of course, the title of the first book of the Hebrew Bible, a word filled with layers of meaning and associations. Matthew begins his gospel with this proclamation: “An account of the genesis of Jesus.” And that’s a clue, and more than clue, that we are being offered something radically new: a new story, a new beginning, a new creation coming out of a rather messy, if royal, history.

Which brings us at long last to today's gospel reading with its focus on Joseph. We could mention Joseph being a dreamer like his namesake, the son of Jacob who was sold into slavery in Egypt but whom God used for the survival of the Davidic line. We could highlight Joseph’s righteousness and compassion in not subjecting his betrothed to public shame and disgrace. But what's most important about this passage from Matthew’s viewpoint is Joseph's obedience, his obedience to the Angel who said to him: “… you are to name the child Jesus.” This is not a casual command, for in act of publicly naming the child, Joseph legally accepts him as his own. In doing this, in claiming the child as his own, he also and very importantly places the child in the Davidic line. Jesus is capable then, and only then, of assuming the role of Messiah, the Anointed, the Christ.

Yes, Joseph was a dreamer. And yes, Joseph was a just man and compassionate. But above all, Joseph was obedient, listening, as Saint Benedict would say five centuries later, with the ear of his heart, acting on what he heard, and opening for all the way of salvation.

I think once again of the picture that I received last week of my great grandparents and how interesting that is to me. But I think also of another picture, an icon or image, that is yet more interesting and much more important.

Next Saturday evening, Christmas Eve at first vespers, we will sing Prudentius’ achingly beautiful fourth-century hymn Of the Father's Love Begotten. The second verse never fails to touch me:

O that birth forever blessed, when the Virgin full of grace,

by the Holy Ghost conceiving, bore the Savior of our race;

and the Babe, the world's Redeemer, first revealed his sacred face,

evermore and evermore!

It is in that face and that babe that we discover our true ancestry, and it is there that we find our deepest identity as children of God and discover there our true end, our life's purpose and our goal.

Brothers and sisters, let us keep an eye out for that face this Christmas season. In it, we will see our own true face. And through, it we will come home to our own heart, close to the heart of God.

O yes!

Advent 3 A - December 11, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

The Rev. Samuel Kennedy

Advent 3 A - December 11, 2022

Isaiah 35:1-10

James 5:7-10

Matthew 11:2-11

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In the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit

A blessed Gaudete Sunday to you.  What is it about this Sunday that sets it apart from the other Sundays in our journey through the season of Advent?  There are signs around us that something is changing – something is a bit different.  The warm glow from the advent wreath is a little stronger today -- a bit brighter now with the third candle lit. Our priests are dressed in rose vestments, and if you have one of the traditional advent wreaths at home you may have lit a rose-colored candle this morning as you woke up.

While we the reading from which this Sunday gets its name is not assigned for us this year, our journey through Advent does begin to take a particular turn this Sunday which I believe is very much a cause for joy.  But we are going to discover that cause for joy within a Gospel lesson full of dissonance.

 

In Matthew’s gospel, we continue with a narrative that focuses on the rather fiery and enigmatic character John the Baptist. But whereas last week we met him in the full strength of his ministry in the Jordan valley, in this week’s Gospel, we find him in a dramatically different situation.  He has been imprisoned unjustly by Herod Antipas, and while John may not have known it at this point in his story, we the readers know that his earthly journey is nearing its end.  Nothing about that situation speaks of joy.  

Our Gospel for today opens with John in prison sending a message to his cousin, Jesus.  Our passage reads, “When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”

Mind you, this is the same John who had been “all in” on the idea that Jesus was the long awaited One.  The One whom the prophets had foretold.  The One who would come to his people and set them free.  

What had happened to lead John from such certainty about Jesus to this place of doubt?  Was it the fact that he was unjustly imprisoned?  Just some understandable depression? Perhaps. 

But I find it unlikely that a figure as bold and contrarian as John was terribly surprised to find himself imprisoned by corrupt leaders.  After all, he had spent much of his ministry decrying the immorality and hypocrisy of the power structures and leaders of his day.  And while I can only imagine the hardships of life in prison in the 1st century, I would imagine that the asceticism of his life up to that point would have equipped him to be able to live in such a place without falling into deep despair.

It would appear that John’s doubt stems from something deeper than the setting he finds himself in – as terrible as that setting may be.    

Lets take another look at the text, it reads “When John… heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples…” to ask this question, ‘‘’Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?’”

It would seem that there is something fundamental about Jesus’ ministry that has led John to this place of profound doubt.  Jesus, it would appear, is not measuring up to John’s expectations.  

In our Gospel lesson last week we heard John articulate some of his expectations for Jesus’ ministry.  When talking about Jesus he says to his listeners, “I tell you, the ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.  I baptize you with water….but after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

John expected the promised One to come with righteous vengeance and a measure of wrath, with a winnowing fork and the flames of purification.  And lest we dismiss John too quickly, we must remember that these are not unnatural or even unscriptural expectations.  In our Old Testament lesson which soars with hope and provides an evocative litany of images of transformation – images of thirsty land being transformed into bubbling spring, and of the parched desert bursting into bloom, we also hear the expectation that God will execute vengeance on behalf of the oppressed, “Strengthen the feeble hands”, the text reads,” steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, Be strong do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come and save you.”    

This appears to be what John was expecting; what he was longing to see. And if we are honest, if I am honest, this is sometimes what I long to see.  I want to see those who oppress others, and certainly those I feel are oppressing me, punished.  I want them to experience some sort of retribution.  And quite frankly, on a practical level in this world, the unseating of unjust powers always seems to require a measure of violent power on the part of the oppressed or those who choose to protect them.  It’s just the way this world seems to work.  So, I don’t think John is terribly misguided in his expectation, that the promised One of God, would be ushering in his reign in a decidedly different way than Jesus appears to be living, teaching, and ministering. 

How does Jesus respond?  Well, he doubles down really.  

He replies, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see.  Jesus is reminding John’s disciples that change is truly afoot, and Jesus is ushering it in.  Jesus continues by quoting from our Old Testament Lesson for today, “the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.”

Note what Jesus decidedly leaves out of his quote.  He leaves out the hallmark descriptions of Divine violence.  He doesn’t say, take heart John, just a few more days, and I will rally the people to overthrow the tyrants who have imprisoned you.  Take heart John, because in just a few more days I will marshal legions of angels to dismantle the systems of oppression that have subjugated your people.”

No, instead, Jesus indicates that he is doing something very different.  He is starting from the inside out.  He doesn’t begin by eliminating the systems of oppression, but by healing the very wounds that the systems of oppression are built to exploit.  The blind who are helplessly dependent on the seeing -- they have their sight restored.  The lepers who are excluded from the community by virtue of their illness?  They are cleansed and reincorporated into society– free to return to the Temple of their God.  The deaf hear, and even the dead are raised – the power of the sword itself is mitigated.   And this is indeed incredibly good news for all of these poor who have been healed and given new life.

But what we do not hear, is Jesus centering the sword of justice in this his work of restoration.  And Jesus knows this is a conspicuous and scandalous absence.   He knows it isn’t what John expects as he adds to his message, “And blessed are those who do not stumble on account of me.”  

But notice, there is another conspicuous absence in our Gospel lesson today.  And it is this.  Jesus does not condemn John for his doubt or his fundamental misunderstanding about how Jesus was going to usher in the Kingdom of God.  In fact, Jesus goes on to publicly commend John for his faithful work as a prophet who leaned into the winds of oppression and injustice.  Jesus does not swing the sword of condemnation toward his forerunner who is struggling in doubt, confusion, and quite possibly anger, but rather extends to him the gift of love that can expand John’s heart and mind, that can bring to John to the place where he can rejoice in the work of God that extends far beyond anything John had been able to conceive of.

And this is what we are invited to take joy in today, my siblings. As the swirling clouds of the apocalyptic imagery of advent begin to clear, we find the image of this coming Kingdom of God beginning to take shape.  And the shape it takes is challenging but it is cause for true joy.  It is challenging because it will frustrate some of our basic notions about how bad power is disrupted and how the oppressed get lifted up.  But it is cause for joy because this Kingdom that Jesus ushers in, creates change that cannot be undone.  

There is also cause for joy, because this is how Jesus comes to each of us.  Not bearing the sword of vengeance and retribution, but with the powerful touch of healing love.  To set us free from the spiritual blindness and willful ignorance that leads us to participate in these systems of oppression and injustice.  Our participation in these systems is both external and internal, and he also comes to set us free from the spirals of shame that lead us to acts of great internal violence.  

This advent, Jesus does not come bearing the sword of Divine retribution but rather bearing the cross of love.  He comes to heal his people and set us free. And if we can allow ourselves to not be scandalized by this Jesus, I believe we will find that this is indeed great reason to rejoice.

 In the name of God: Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing.  

Amen.

Advent 2 A - December 4, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Luc Thuku, OHC

Advent 2 A - December 4, 2022

Isaiah 11:1-10

Romans 15:4-13

Matthew 3:1-12

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

We gather again with joy this morning to celebrate the second Sunday of Advent. Advent as we know is a season in the church calendar dedicated to the hopeful anticipation of the arrival or ‘coming’ of Jesus. This advent can be a commemoration of his coming as a baby, 2000 plus years ago, which culminates with Christmas; or the second coming in glory that we hope and wait for, our salvation. During this period, as a young Christian, we were encouraged to engage in meditation, prayer, and scripture study that emphasizes hope, peace, love and joy.

From the first story in the Bible to the last, we see narratives, poetry, prophecy, biographies and personal letters that inform our understanding of the Advent of Jesus in unique ways.

One such passage is what we heard from in the first reading today. The prophet Isaiah speaks of a Messianic King who will manifest the characteristics of the great people of Israel up to David. It claims that life will spring forth from the injured stump of Jesee and a branch shall grow out of his roots. This reference is very important to Israel’s history because of the many exiles they had experienced, although the text specifically speaks of or imagines a new beginning for the monarchy of Judah. 

In this hopeful future, the Spirit of God will descend upon the ruler resulting in Justice for the poor and lowly of the land as we hear in verse 4 of the text. The text also speaks of the re-ordering of creation’s priorities in verses 6-9, where life emerges from death and a return to the original harmony of Paradise.

The concrete expression of this new future is a person, a ruler on whom the Spirit will rest; a human being who embodies what is best in the traditions of Israel. This ruler will be wise and understanding, powerful and effective in war, able to judge for the benefit of the poor, and obedient to God. So glorious is the reign of this king that he is literally clothed in righteousness and faithfullness.

As Christians, it is not hard to see ourselves as the nation ruled by this monarch, Jesus of Nazareth, the Jewish descendant of Jesee through David. A close comparison though, between the expectations of the king described in our passage and the ministry of Jesus reveals some strong differences. Jesus had a strong ministry and continues to minister graciously in the present through Word, Sacrament and through works of mercy carried on by his faithful disciples. However, evil still flourishes in the world, the poor and meek remain afflicted, predators continue to kill their prey and violence is still done on God’s Holy mountain. The earth is still very far from being full of the knowledge of the Lord. Christ’s victory therefore falls short in human terms; it remains a hidden victory or an unacomplished victory which is disappointing at times.

Bruce Springsteen in his song “Reason To Believe”  expresses this disappointment in song….

Seen a man standing over a dead dog

By a highway in a ditch

He’s looking kinda puzzled

Poking that dog with a stick

Got his car door flung open

He’s standing out on highway 31

Like if he stood there long enough

That dog’d get up and run

Struck me kinda funny

Seemed kinda  funny, sir, to me

Still at the end of every hard day

People find some reason to believe

Now, Mary Lou loved Johnny

With a love mean and true

She said, “Baby, I’ll work for you every day”

And bring my money home to you

One day, he up and left her

And ever since that

She waits at the end of the dirt road

For young Johnny to come back

Struck me kinda funny

Funny, yeah, indeed

How at the end of every hard-earned day

People find some reason to believe

Take a baby to the river

“Kyle William” they called him

Wash the baby in the water

Take away little Kyle’s sin

In a whitewashed shotgun shack

An old man passes away

Take the body to the graveyard

Over him they pray

Lord won’t you tell us

Tell us-what does it mean?

At the end of every hard-earned day

People find some reason to believe.

Congregation gathers

Down by the riverside

Preacher stands with a Bible

Groom stands waiting for his bride

Congregation gone and the sun sets

Behind a willow weeping tree

Groom stands alone and watches the river rush on

So effortlessly

Wondering 

Where can his baby be

Still, at the end of every hard-earned day

People find some reason to believe 

Can we therefore conclude that Jesus was a failed Messiah? I would say No…but we need to agree that his ministry is still fundamentally incomplete. It is fundamently incomplete mainly because we misunderstood the message and failed to see our role in it. We took it literally that when he comes things will change and decided that we are passive observers rather than active participants. The mess in the world is mostly of our own making either by omission or by commission, through blatant disobedience, ignorance or misinterpretation of scripture.

This passage from today therefore reminds us Christians that we should still long for the Messianic completion of creation, the so called second coming or parousia. We therefore should not judge the Jews who have historically struggled to see Jesus and his ministry as Messianic because we too are looking forward to it’s completion. Our waiting for the second coming, however, should be an active waiting. Since it will be a kingdom of Justice, we must right now work for justice…it will be a Kingdom of equality, so we must now work for the equality of all…A kingdom of harmony, then we should right now strive to live in harmony with one another…a Kingdom of friendship, then right now we must try to become each other’s true friend in the Lord…a Kingdom of brothers and sisters, then we must right now start coming closer and closer to our neighbors. This in other words means that we must reform our lives for the Kingdom of God is at hand.

We are invited by this text to celebrate the ministry of Jesus in the past, and especially in the present, but also keep in mind the important place of intercession and work so that creation may arrive at its promised destiny as a place where peace, Justice and grace have the final word. 

Advent is about hopes and longings. We all yearn to be with people dear to us and especially with Jesus, whose second coming we so look forward to. This is because the world we live in is fractured and needs healing and peace, a healing and peace that only he can give. 

The delay of something much longed for can result in angst and pain but when the desire is fulfilled, it is like we have accessed the tree of life, an oasis in the desert, something that allows us to feel refreshed and renewed.

During the waiting and longing times, praying and pondering the wisdom of the Bible has at times helped me greatly as a person. Paul reminds us in the second reading that we heard from Romans 15:4-13 that whatever was written in the scriptures is for our instruction so that by their steadfasteness and encouragement we may find hope. That is why I recommend the wisdom of our religious educators that I mentioned at the  beginning, that we read scripture texts that emphasize hope, peace, love and joy.

Some of our hope and desires might not be fulfilled right away. Some, in fact, might only be met through God when we die. Whatever our longing, we can trust in Him knowing He loves us unceasingly, and that one day we will be reunited with Him, behold Him as He truly is, and praise Him with Thanksgiving. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit”[Romans 15:13]

Let us pray:

God our creator, you fulfil our deepest longings. We give you our hopes and our desires, asking you to grant them according to your wisdom and love

Though Jesus who comes.

Amen.

Advent 1 A - November 27, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve, OHC

Advent 1 A - November 27, 2022

Isaiah 2:1-5

Romans 13:11-14

Matthew 24:36-44

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

We begin the liturgical year at the end of the age. This is profound, because the narrative of holy scripture is urgent to set before us our end and the world’s end as we have known it.  God’s good creation, marred by sin and evil and groaning for its liberation, is comforted in hope that new creation is our end and home.  The whole Christian revelation falls apart without the promise that the world will ultimately be set right, suffering and death vanquished, and our own selves, resurrected in bodies incorruptible and perfect, will enjoy the direct and unmediated presence of the Lord forever.  

All of the life of discipleship is informed by and moves toward that hope.  Evil and suffering are real, but will not ultimately triumph.  Death and the grave are the next to the last things that happen to us.  The declaration of the nature of Christ’s coming again in glory is not a far away wispy dream, not a threat of violent revenge on the disobedient, but the bedrock of why and how to bother with following Christ at all.  How we live in the present, what we believe about our service and prayer and love for one another is inextricably linked, whether we are conscious of it or not, to what we believe is coming for us and for our world.  We know God is God because God is a God of promise and God keeps promises.  Our hope for the future is grounded in our memory of God’s saving acts.  I am not a Christian in order merely for the afterlife payoff, but I cannot remain a Christian without the promise that the world toward which I work and pray and groan is surely to come. 

That is the liturgical prelude. Now a prelude on this gospel reading: the Jesus of Nazareth whom we read about in the gospels is jarringly present and open.  He keeps showing us and telling us who he is.  He is also a mystery because we cannot fully comprehend his identity.  He acts in surprising, even shocking ways. He does not bend to our ideas of Messiah, or even much care about our ideas.  He is simple, but never easy.  Spend a lifetime pondering and living his words, and you will barely scratch the surface of their meaning.  From beginning to end, he does the Father’s will by modeling and proclaiming God’s love for all. He announces that this kingdom and way of love is alive in God’s covenant faithfulness in a way of being human and in a community that loves neighbor as self. The triumphant justification of us and the world in a new heaven and a new earth is coming, so our vocation is to live now in anticipation of what is to come.

Now to the reading itself.  Our finitude and that of the earth forces the questions of meaning.  The spiritual value of apocalyptic speech is the seriousness of choice, the necessity of awakening to reality - to look, to see.  We wake up especially to those realities we would rather avoid, that make us uncomfortable, that confront us with our duplicity, our double-mindedness.  Christ believes in our power more than we do.  He sees our freedom at times when we would rather escape it.  He is not going to force us onto the ark of salvation, but it is there and we have to make a choice.  Jesus continues to be the great Illuminator still.   To the receptive and willing, the good news is their greatest joy and hope.  To the resistant this same good news stirs confusion, misinterpretation, opposition, and hate.  This language does not condescend to our categories of analysis.  

Part of why beginning Advent with the apocalypse is so powerful is that we enter right away a realm where time gets bent, answers become questions and questions become answers, and our safe and small categories of truth and security are shattered in the light of God’s wild and wide passion for the whole universe.  In Advent we do away with the introductory pleasantries and plunge right into the nature of the paradox of the words themselves:  we are waiting for Christ. Christ is already here.  We long to see the promise of our hope. We already see it.  The hope of Advent is born in the meeting of our desire and God’s desire; we send our waiting from the present into the future.  God sends the kingdom of peace from the future to the present.  We believe they meet and that meeting is called hope.  

The waiting is the surrender.  This kind of waiting is not like waiting for the train.  Advent waiting is the active, open-ended expectation of the real but unknown and unknowable.  For Christ, the human vocation is to enter into this disequilibrium, not avoid it or explain it.  We are most fully human when we know ourselves as creatures and entrust our mortal creatureliness to the one who made us and will remake us anew.  The good news is that the waiting is already the very offering that forms in us the eyes to see and the ears to hear Christ’s coming among us.  

When we lapse into passivity and indifference, may Christ the Prophet break in and steal our apathy and stir in us the cry, “Come, Lord Jesus.”  When we are overly impressed with our own power and believe we know best how to fix the world, may Christ the Savior break in and steal our pride and groan within us, “How long, O Lord?”

I conclude with this beautiful quote from Megan McKenna: “Advent is about judgment and standing in the presence of the thief, the Son of Man, not flinching, looking God straight in the eye, and rejoicing…  The Holy One is coming to visit and is intent on stealing us away from all we are attached to and binding us to one another in peace.” Amen.

Feast of James Huntington - November 25, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Ephrem Arcement

Feast of James Otis Sargent Huntington - November 25, 2022

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Thee, mighty Trinity! One God! 

Let every living creature laud;

Whom by the Cross Thou dost deliver, 

O guide and govern now and ever! Amen.

The former Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Confederation, Notker Wolf, had this to say about the call to monastic life:

"At first we feel called by God and attracted by him. We grow in our vocation and get the impression that God has gripped us and will never let us go. We want to withdraw from him in order to escape his grasp. But he loves us too much to allow us to fall. He holds us fast." 

One of the most common and recurring motifs of Sacred Scripture is the call narrative.  We hear God’s call to Abram, Moses, and Joseph; to Samuel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah; to the Virgin Mary, Peter, and Paul.  These and so many more have their lives suddenly interrupted and are overwhelmed by the sense that their lives as they know it is no longer possible because of this divine interruption.  A new path opens up which wasn’t seen before and a voice beckons to follow.  

And this vocation to leave all and follow continues to be heard by some people long after the pages of the Bible have come to an end.  Antony, Benedict, and Romuald hear it.  Francis, Clare, and Dominic hear it.  And even after the vocation to religious life was discredited by the Protestant reformers, God’s voice to leave all and follow was still heard resulting in the Community of the Sisterhood of the Holy Cross, the first women’s Anglican religious order, the Society of St. John the Evangelist, the first men’s Anglican religious order, and James Huntington’s Order of the Holy Cross, the first men’s religious order of the Episcopal Church.  

We’ve just heard the original and paradigmatic call narrative…the call of Abram.  Abram was a wealthy man living a comfortable life.  He had everything going for him.  He wasn’t engrossed in sin, nor was he crying out to God to be saved from an encroaching enemy.  He was simply living his life as was the custom of his day when suddenly God stepped into the routine of his life and revealed a plan for Abram that Abram could never have imagined for himself.  Abram’s good wasn’t good enough for God!  And in that moment, it’s as if Abram becomes so intoxicated with the vision of God that the most daring, the most reckless behavior follows: he leaves country, kindred, and home…all that defined him and all that he knew and loved…with only the voice of God as guide and the promise of God as inspiration.  What results is a whole new way of being in the world that would allow for God to be revealed without the encumbrance of the old ways of Abram’s thinking and being.  Now, Abram wakes up each morning not just with the day’s routines ahead but with a divine purpose and a divine mandate and the blessing of God begins to overflow in all he says and does.  

St. Paul’s equally dramatic interruption accomplishes the same effect:  the old man is stripped off and, impregnated with divine vision of the new creation, Paul boldly follows the call of God with faith alone as guide and reimagines what life in this world can be like lived fully united to God in Christ.  And the world will never be the same because of it.

This same spirit that demands all and summons with urgency to follow possessed Antony which drove him from the comforts of life on the Nile into the solitude of the desert, possessed Benedict which drove him from the mediocrity of life as a Roman student to the meaningful life of seeking God with all his heart, and possessed Francis to strip himself of all worldly possessions and live in stark imitation of the poor Christ.  And this very same spirit also possessed James Huntington to face the ridicule and opposition of a church highly skeptical of religious life to create a community of monks anyway…monks devoted to imitating the crucified Christ who bore the cross for love of the world.  

Like Jeremiah experienced long ago, some people find themselves seduced by God, so overwhelmed by a beauty, so overcome with a purpose that all freedom to choose otherwise seems lost.  Nothing else but obedience and faithfulness to this vision will let one find rest.  “You seduced me, Lord, and I let myself be seduced; you were too strong for me, and you prevailed.”

Each of the God-possessed founders and foundresses of new religious communities, while all daring to follow God to a place they know not and at the cost of immense sacrifice, bore their own unique expression of the Kingdom of God.

In the case of James Huntington and the Order of the Holy Cross, this aspiring member is particularly struck by one quality above all that, at least from my perspective, makes Huntington and the community he founded especially attractive.  Even above his courageous spirit and fortitude is his personal love for Christ and his cross that suffuses his spirituality and the very wise rule he left for the monks in his charge and on which the Holy Cross monks of today continue to stand.  

For Huntington, all the elements of the religious life point to Christ and to the cross which reveals the passion of God’s divine love for the world.  The line O Crux, Ave, Spes Unica (O Cross, our one reliance, hail!) from the hymn Vexilla Regis opens his rule and situates all that is to come.  The life of prayer, which forms the first part of the rule, brings one face to face with the cross…in the liturgy, in obedience, in meditation, in the pondering of Sacred Scripture.  The cross is born in one’s own ascetical life as one appropriates it in the dying to self and in the service to God and one’s brothers in community, which forms the second part of the rule.  And, in the third part, the fiery love encountered in this divine appropriation of the cross manifests the fruit of the cross: a love which must act and a fire which must burn and a Christ in each of us which must bring healing and salvation:  Crux est mundi medicina (The cross is the medicine of the world).  

The life of Father Huntington and the vision for his order of monks is one of total integration into the life of Christ crucified–at once possessed by the love shone forth on the cross in prayer and worship and simultaneously and because of this possessed by the power of the Spirit released from the cross to love without limit.  The dichotomies of the spiritual life fall by the wayside, and all that is left is one consumed with love and fire which must act and burn.

Brothers, we too have heard this call from the cross.  We too have left all behind to journey together with faith alone as our guide, and our hearts burn with this same fiery love.  On this holy day, let us recommit ourselves to stoke this flame in each other through our daily sacrificial acts of kindness and love until each of our hearts burns with the fire that burned in the heart of our founder whose heart burned with the fire that burned in the heart of our Christ.

Christ the King - November 20, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen, OHC

Proper 29 C - Christ the King - November 20, 2022

Jeremiah 23:1-6
Colossians 1:11-20
Luke 23:33-43

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

Today being a named feast—Christ the King—should make the preacher’s task easy. The three-year lectionary cycle gives us three different images of Christ as King. This year is particularly juicy, if you will, especially given our current political, social, and environmental chaos. 

As I was preparing for this sermon, I kept wanting to tell you about how Christ is not a worldly king. His crown is a crown of thorns. His throne the Cross. In a world in which our leaders set themselves up as demagogues, this is model of kingship we need. I kept wanting to tell you that God’s power is made perfect in weakness, as Paul reminds us. That the kings and potentates and dictators of this world will have their end, that their power goes only so far as the bullet and the bomb, but that God’s power outlasts even the sharpest bullet or the biggest bomb. 

I wanted to tell you all these things. I even believe them. But instead, I heard the Holy Spirit whispering to me, “tell them about Love.” Today is a celebration of the triumph of God’s love. And not at some distant time we call the future, or in some far-off place we call heaven, but right here and right now. 

Julian of Norwich reminds us that all God does for us in Christ is Love and for the sake of Love. Christ’s crown is Love, and Christ’s glory is Love. His death was for Love, and his rising for Love. He sustains us with his Love, and he clothes us with his Love. When the rags of this world fall away from us, only Love remains. 

The feast we celebrate today, the feast of Christ as King, is the celebration of God’s all-powerful love for us and the whole world. It’s also the promise that, after the bullets and the bombs and the heartache, God’s love wins. 

The wisdom of our lectionary reminds us this morning that Christ’s self-giving love is the love of the Cross. Any parent can tell you that deep love is a crucifixion. Because true love reveals our powerlessness. Love takes us to the edge of our being, where we see our own inability to save our beloved, and at that edge, love impels us to pour ourselves out anyway. That’s the love Christ shows for us, pouring out his life for us and offering himself for our healing and redemption. 

We don’t need complex theologies of atonement to understand this movement of love. We only need to move down into our hearts. There we find Christ, enthroned on his Cross, planted in the soil of our hearts. There we learn that love is never about building up or throwing down. It isn’t about conquering or triumphing. Love breaks us down and breaks us open. It softens us, slows us, empties us. And in that emptiness—miracle of miracles—Christ’s love fills us full again with a life we could never have imagined. 

Christ’s way of love is the way of smallness, powerlessness, and failure. And it’s also the way into the kingdom of God. 

Fr. Jermonde Taylor, one of the candidates for bishop in this diocese, said the other night that the major problem facing the Church and Christians today is that we are trying to live whole lives. Instead, God calls us to live fractured lives. Like the host, broken into pieces, we are to live lives broken open to the love of God. And as God stitches us together into the Body of Christ through our participation in the Paschal Mystery, we who were many are made one and whole in Christ. 

The problem with trying to live whole lives is that we shut God out of the process. Wholeness is not ours to make. Salvation is not ours to grant. We cannot create life or flourishing or grace. Actually, quite the opposite. It is our smallness, our frailty, our dying, and our weakness that allow God’s power to move through us to remake and restore us and God’s beloved world. 

The beginning and the end of that work is Love: our love for God, but most particularly God’s love for us. 

Whenever we sing St. Patrick’s Breastplate, I choke up at the line “Christ in hearts of those who love me.” There is some deep truth in those words that shatters me. And if Christ lives in the heart of those who love me, then Christ also lives in my heart, loving the people that fill my life. 

Luke is constantly reminding us that the Kingdom of God is within us. Right here. Our own hearts are Christ’s throne of glory. And, fractured though our lives may be, Christ reigns within us, loving us and the world with a love that reconciles all things. 

It isn’t just that Christ’s love within us outlasts earthly kingdoms. It’s that right here, and right now, that love ties us to eternity and to the fullness of God within us and among us. We are already in Christ’s kingdom, and if we had the eyes to see, we would see this church filled full of saints and angels and all the chorus of heaven, surrounding us, cheering us, loving us. 

To quote Dame Julian again, all will indeed be well, because at deepest level, all is already profoundly well, even here, even now. Christ is already seated on his throne of glory in heaven, on the Cross, and in our own human hearts.

Proper 28 C - November 13, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Proper 28 C - November 13, 2022

Malachi 4:1-2a
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Be not terrified! Not a hair of your head will perish. 

Our salvation lies in good hands, in God’s hands. 

Imposters will come. War and conflict will rage on (31 countries currently at war in some form or another). Natural disasters will be prevalent. But God’s desire will prevail.

*****

To love God is not just talk. And loving God is not always like walking through a rose garden at dusk.

All three texts today encourage us to keep at our work as Christians, no matter what. In case you need reminding, our work as Christians is summarized in the Great Commission and the Golden Commandment.

The commission is …that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in Jesus’ name to all nations… (Luke 24:47) and the commandment is that …we shall love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our strength, and with all our mind; and our neighbor as ourself… (Luke 10:27)

*****

Apocalyptic literature was a well-known narrative format to the Jewish nation. It kept making a comeback in the Jewish nation’s collective mind whenever they were on the receiving end of international violence in the form of invasion and forced exile. And it made a comeback when it seemed convenient to part with their Jewish identity in order to assuage the difficulties at hand.

Apocalyptic literature is meant to reveal the deeper nature of reality; it tears open the veil that seems to hide God at work in the world; it shows catastrophes and hardships as episodes that we need to endure to enable unity with God.

At the time Luke wrote the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Jewish community (of which the Jesus movement still considered itself an integral part) was reeling from what felt like a world-changing catastrophe. 

The Temple at Jerusalem, the most meaningful center of religious worship, had been destroyed, the city’s population had been massacred after a horrid siege, and the remnant of population had been dispersed in the rest of the Roman Empire.

So it is in keeping with his times that Luke, at the end of the first century of our era, would use the apocalyptic style to emphasize Jesus’ authority.

*****

With today’s gospel passage Luke conveys two important messages to his community.

First important message: Jesus was truly a great prophet. He spoke great truths and some of them came to be realized by the time Luke writes to his people. Two things that Jesus prophesied have by now happened in their living memory or in their present time:

- The Temple has been utterly destroyed,

- The Jesus movement has been, and continues to be, the object of persecutions.

Luke’s gospel a little further than today’s passage assures us that eventually Jesus will return in glory, just as he prophesied. 

So Luke wants us to know that if Jesus was right about the destruction of the Temple and the persecution of his followers, he is also right about his second coming. That is Luke’s first important message to his community. Jesus will come back in glory. You can count on it.

*****

Luke’s second message to his community is to continue its living witness to the message of Jesus Christ, in the meantime.

If earthly powers are doing unjust and unrighteous things, we are not to put the gospel under the bushel. On the contrary, we are to show endurance and fortitude in declaring the gospel. 

We are to persevere in standing for what is right in both word and action. That is how we maintain the integrity of our souls. That is how we live the resurrected life to the fullest.

Should persecutions ensue; so be it. Persecution may actually give us some highly visible opportunities to testify to the gospel.

Suffering as an opportunity for testimony. What kind of testimony does one give in the face of great suffering and great hatred? But Jesus says we need not worry how we will make our case to those who might want to silence us.

Jesus is with us to the end of times and the Spirit itself will speak through us.

Luke is encouraging his community to not be idle while waiting for the Lord’s return. Jesus himself told parables on this theme. Continue to witness with your lives about Jesus, the Way.

*****

The prophet Malachi gives me hope that God will make things good “on the day when God acts”, as he says.

Regardless of how far humanity will have progressed by then and regardless of what calamities will have been endured - On that day, moral ambiguity will disappear and reconciliation will prevail.

Unrighteous success and profit will be unveiled and come to nothing. Then once more you shall see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.

*****

In the meantime, we’ve got work to do. And the author of the second letter to the Thessalonians (probably a disciple of Paul, not Paul himself) gives us further guidance in how to be faithful to God.

Loving God is a work of community and everyone should actively be involved. This work of community gets harder the more people are coasting and running commentary from the sidelines. 

As our writer to the Thessalonians says; “do not be weary in doing what is right” (2 Thess. 3;13).

*****

So what it is that makes these readings relevant today. What makes today’s world an apocalyptic place? What is it that we need to speak out the gospel about?

Is it the overburdening of our planetary weather system? Is it the overconsumption of resources to the profit of the wealthiest and most powerful and at the expense of the rest? 

Is it the use of the justice system to punish rather than to repair, restore and reconcile? Is it the use of industrial and military power to impose worldviews and national agendas on other peoples? 

Is it the pursuit of yet another meaningless pleasure at the expense of deeper connection with our fellow human beings?

For now, the Kingdom of God comes quietly, hidden, unseen. Our very lives are what God gets to use to make God’s Kingdom of Love urgently break into the hardness of the world. 

We are bodies that enable the body of Christ to act in the world. We are part and parcel of the Revelation of God’s Love for creation. God’s Kingdom is also within and among us. It is being revealed also in our contemporary situation. 

*****

“Apocalypse now” is not only a Francis Ford Coppola movie masterpiece; it is one of the themes of the nearing season of Advent. You get a break with the Feast of Christ the King next week, but apocalyptic literature will be back. Let’s get to God’s work of love now.

Proper 27 C - November 6, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC

Proper 27 C - November 6, 2022

Haggai 1:15b-2:9
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

    According to the lectionary, today’s texts are only read in late autumn close to the feasts of All Hallows, All Saints, and All Souls which may help us overcome some of our skepticism and unease with what is mysterious and unseen. What the ancients called spirits, angels or demons were actual entities to them that exercised power over their lives. Most parishes transfer the Feast of All Saints to today, which partially explains why in 40 years I’ve never preached on these texts.

    The Epistle’s basic story of good winning out over evil and of God and Satan set in opposition includes a decisive confrontation littered with enigmatic persons and forces. The promise is that evil will be defeated. The Thessalonians lived in a time, not unlike our own, of heightened expectation that the end of the world, at least as they knew it, would be coming soon. They were worked up into an apocalyptic frenzy which was splintering the community. The writer is trying to calm them down, refocus their attention, clarify some misconceptions about the return of Christ, and the way in which they should wait together for that return. Gratitude and encouragement are the antidotes to their fear-based hysteria. He reminds them and us of our common calling to be sons and daughters of God and of our inheritance in the glory of Christ.

 

    Haggai, one of three post-exilic prophets, arose in Judah after Persia became the dominant power in the Near East (539 BCE), and the Jews were permitted to return to their homeland. Amid utter despair this small remnant hears a gracious word of affirmation. The divine call to rebuild the temple is a call to commitment and relationship to God. Haggai addresses their concern by assuring them that God is with them and will provide what the people need for rebuilding the temple. They, however, became preoccupied with rebuilding their own houses and Haggai reminds them that they are not in this as individuals but are called and sustained as a community. The community exists for the sake of its members. Growth in holiness is a journey in community.

    Both lessons remind us that we live in and through one another. We become ourselves only through a process of mutual becoming. It begins in God’s own creative, self-giving love. Our core identity rests in the divine Love that birthed us all. We are all one, all loved corporately by and in God. We are saved not by being privately perfect, but by being part of the whole, part of the Body that is Christ. This echoes the biblical concept of a covenant love granted to the Jewish people, and never just to one individual. 

    This awareness of reality upends so many of our current obsessions about private worthiness, reward and punishment, gender, race, class distinctions, and possessions. The Gospel message is about learning to live and die together in and with God. The good news is that God is saving and redeeming the Whole first and foremost, and we are all caught up in it. We are the blessed beneficiaries, the partly willing participants in the Whole. Mature religion is meant to realign what our egos and survival instincts have put asunder, namely the fundamental wholeness at the heart of everything. The source of our disease and violence is separation from parts of ourselves, from each other, and from God. The early Church understood overcoming divisions as part of its mandate, emphasizing connectedness and oneness in Christ. 

    Throughout history we humans have had a strong appreciation for and connection with our ancestors. The notion of oneness is what Christians were trying to verbalize when they made a late addition to the ancient Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the communion of saints.” The feast of All Saints entered the Christian tradition in the 4th century with a focus on relation and remembrance, offering us the idea that the dead are at one with the living.

    With this in mind, we turn to Luke’s passage. The Sadducees, the wealthy elite, denied life after death. In this passage they set an intellectual trap for Jesus hoping to show that his teaching about the resurrection of the dead was absurd. Their imaginary scenario about the woman consecutively marrying seven brothers in levirate marriage (Gen. 38:8) is intended to make fun of Jesus. Wealth, power, and prestige insulated them from the pain implied in this tawdry tale of a woman passed from one brother to another.  The question they pose has to do with ownership and marital rights. Jesus takes them seriously and makes the basic point that things don’t work in heaven the way they do on earth. Eternal life is not simply a continuation of this life. Although death is the end of many things, it is not the end of God. 

    When Jesus says: “God is not a God of the dead.” He isn’t saying that God is indifferent toward the dead or that God has forgotten them. God’s love for us is eternal. In compassionate love the dead are drawn into God’s heart. As they were, so now they are in God, healed and whole. In heaven all are children of the resurrection. All who lived before us and are now not among us are living in God. Because of that connection to God, they are not dead to us. They still speak today. We are today together with them because God is not the God of the dead but of the living. This kind of mutual interdependence I have sensed to be true with the death of those closest to me. Anyone acquainted with the poignancy of love that lives on after our loved one dies, will recognize this as we read the story of our lives through the lens of the resurrection.

    When Jesus speaks of the God of the living, he is naming the God of newness, forgiveness, and liberation. He does not answer our many questions about the resurrection or provide a road map of the new creation, though one of our fond illusions is that he should. Jesus teaches us how to walk through this great mystery and to trust that God is on the other side of it. When we consider ourselves to be part of a continuum of life that does not end with death, but transitions to a life after life, our perspective changes. Jesus points us to a God whose faithfulness is immeasurable and inexhaustible. In that faithfulness we find enough to endure all that life and death will ask of us.

    In our day it’s easy to become disillusioned, fearful, and self-absorbed as the Israelite remnant and the Thessalonian Christians did. It’s easy to lose hope. To think of the past as a better time than the present seems to be a common human tendency. The move into the future is not just a repeat of the past and a faint echo of former glory. In God’s future we are moving toward and co-creating a surge of wonder, grace, beauty, and love. Our God is a God who makes a way when there is no way. As Christians we are shaped by more than our experiences; we are shaped by our hopes, by the future and convictions into which we are living and dying. Hope is best lived within a hopeful community, in the company of the saints, living and departed. In such company we find comfort and courage as we face the future together.

+Amen.