Saint Michael and All Angels - September 29

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve, OHC

Feast of St Michael and All Angels - September 29, 2022

Genesis 28:10-17

Revelation 12:7-12

John 1:47-51

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In When I saw that I was assigned to preach for the feast today, I remembered that I had preached on this day a few years ago. Because we keep a monastery blog of the audio and text of our sermons, I searched and found that the previous sermon was in 2017. For whatever reason, after I preach, I largely forget about what I have said and move on to the next one. So as if I was reading something for the first time, I found the text from five years ago.

Perhaps one of the reasons I tend to forget my sermons is that preaching for me is very much capturing an unrepeatable moment in time. The occasion and my journey into it will never meet again like this. In the older sermon, I referenced a piece of art - the Peace Fountain, a sculpture next to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York. The depiction of St. Michael the Archangel there, as in much other art and iconography, has St. Michael holding a sword or spear and overwhelming the dragon, Satan, as described in the reading from the Revelation to John.

I simply asked, “what does this mean = an angel waging war against the dragon Satan?” I had been studying the topic of the Bible and violence for some time and took that opportunity to summarize some of what I had been learning. The triumph of justice over sin and evil and the coming of God’s realm of peace wrenches the cosmos and changes the very character of life on earth, now joined with heaven.

Today I meet the feast through an encounter with a quite different rendering of St. Michael. The image before us is from a church in Spain, date unknown, that hangs in my office here in the monastery. No sword or spear or war or violence here, no obvious symbolism that this is St. Michael other than Art.com’s word for it. It visualizes an authentic theology of angels: present, yet mysterious; benevolent, but slightly intimidating; human-like while at the same time seeming to step into our material world from some foreign place.

Whether the glass has darkened with age and dirt or whether the artist created it that way, the contrast of the ominous and impenetrable surrounding with a face of such peace and bliss endlessly fascinates me. Just as with the Peace Fountain sculpture, we can ask, “what does this mean?”

To approach an answer to that question it may be helpful to revisit a bit of the theology of creation itself. Theologians often begin with the question, “why did God create at all?” Was God lonely? Did God want a world of submissive, subservient beings to inflate God’s ego?

No. God’s nature is to give, to share glory, to be revealed in goodness, truth, and beauty. The creation is the gift and sign of God’s being as limitless generosity, abundance, and blessing to all. God did not create to control or dominate, but to delight. God delights in and with us as we enjoy the good things of creation. God creates humans because God can. God enjoys us. God created angels to share in the beauty of all that God has made, so that angels will enjoy being angels just as we enjoy being human. So we share a similar and complementary vocation with the angels; to inhabit the meaning and work of our place in the cosmic order that God’s fullest intent and purpose for making us will be made known in us and directed back to our Creator as praise and glory. The existence and appearance of angels gives us clues about what the universe is for and the character of the God who made it.

The assigned readings cast angels in the roles of sign-bearers of God’s communion between heaven and earth. The way they witness is by moving - moving up and down. The Genesis reading of Jacob’s ladder dream has angels “ascending and descending on it.” In the Gospel reading, the Lord echoes Jacob’s dream when he tells Nathanael that “you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” In the three-tiered universe of the Bible, the spiritual realm was up in the sky above and the realm of evil, death, sometimes called the abyss or sea, “down”. So the significance of the angels ascending and descending becomes a way of describing a connection between the unseen, spiritual “above” and the tangible, earthly of our physical world. Most ancient religions would have created a process of purification, training, or knowledge to attain a glimpse of heaven.

Jacob’s dream and Nathanael’s prophecy are not earned by their goodness, possessed by human power, discerned by human understanding. Rather the dream and prophecy are God’s gift bestowed freely for God’s glory and honor into and through human witnesses who share in the heavenly vision of a world beyond what we can see and touch and contain. It is not a stretch to say that this ascending and descending are happening everywhere all the time, unseen by our physical eyes. The angels appear in a particular time and place not so that we will seek to contain that time and place, but, like all sacred places and acts, to point beyond themselves to a God who is happy to be everywhere all the time.

The God who desires to be known as mystery sends messengers to unveil the invitation to covenant. The reading from Revelation adds an interesting twist to this communion between heaven and earth. The angels who war against heaven are thrown down to earth, but do not ascend. Something tragic has been lost in their act. They now become beings who rebel against and harm the creation that previously was the source of delight. It seems even the heavenly beings have a degree of freedom to worship or not.

Finally, this feast is a reminder that liturgy invites us into two main responses. First, we hear and enact the prophetic call to amend our ways and live in reconciliation and peace with our brothers and sisters. The imperatives of scripture give content to our desire to love God and neighbor faithfully. The second and equally important task is less about doing and more about being. Today is such a day. Our task is to pause, look, listen, be awed to wonder and praise at the lavish blessing and beauty of being gifted to taste, even now, the eternal gladness of the glory of God with the angels. Amen.

Proper 21 C - September 25, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen, OHC

Pentecost, Proper 21 C - September 25, 2022

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31

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

It’s so easy to feel smug when we read Jesus’ parables. We’ve read them so often, heard so many sermons on them, that it’s easy to think we’ve got them—and by extension Jesus—figured out. Because of this tendency we normally see ourselves in the outcasts in the stories, never as their persecutors. We’re always Israel, never Egypt, always the publican, never the pharisee. 

Our smugness betrays us, however. Jesus tells stories like those we’ve been hearing the last many weeks to confuse us and untangle the knots of our complacency and stubborn self-regard. As soon as we think we’ve figured out a parable, it shoots out of our hands, falls between our feet, and trips us. 

 

This morning’s story of the rich man and Lazarus is just such a story. On it’s surface it’s rather simple. There’s a callous rich man who feasts all day in his mansion while a beggar starves on his doorstep. He’s very wicked, but his wickedness primarily lies in his self-absorption. It’s not that he bears Lazarus any ill will. He’s just so concerned with his own comfort that he doesn’t even see Lazarus. Even when he ends up in hades being tormented by fire, he treats Lazarus as a tool—someone who can either give him water or warn his brothers for him. Never does he see or acknowledge Lazarus as a child of God. 

 

Fortunately for us, our God is a righteous and just God. Lazarus, who suffered while he was alive, gets to recline at the eternal banquet against the bosom of Abraham. Hopefully the dogs are there, too, being fed the choicest of kibble. Not only does Lazarus get the care he never received on earth, not only does the rich man get to burn for the rest of time, but—and this is the best part—Abraham tells off the rich man for his negligence and self-absorption. It’s a classic tale of the reversal of fortune and the delicious comeuppance that those ignorant rich folks get when we all get to heaven. 

 

You see, surely, how tempting that reading is, how brilliant Jesus’ rhetorical skill is to draw us in and make us identify with the poor man at the gates over against the callous rich guy. Jesus had it before Hollywood. But there’s our smugness again. There’s our hypocritical self-righteousness. There are our callous, unforgiving hearts on full display. 

 

More than Lazarus or the rich man or Abraham, though, I find myself fixated on the chasm. It’s the part of the story that makes no sense to me. One translation I read described it as “a large chasm filled with sharp stones.” It’s something of a moat or gate, some barrier that is fixed in place, unmoving and unmoveable. It must be quite something if even Abraham cannot get past it. And just like the walls around the rich man’s house, this chasm keeps Lazarus and the rich man separated for all eternity. No reconciliation. No forgiveness. No chance of conversion or change or healing. Justice, perhaps, but no mercy. 

 

To the extent that we find ourselves caught up in anger, fear, self-justification, and the desire for revenge, this chasm can’t but remain fixed in place, both in the parable and in our world. Every time we hear this story and think, Glad that rich guy got what was coming to him, we pile another sharp stone in the ditch. We have to see this dimension of the story if our hearts are ever to soften. We have to repent of our heard-heartedness, if we are ever to help to reconcile and heal the jagged-edged divisions in our world. We have to learn to see the chasm with dismay, to mourn its seeming fixity with tears of compunction. 

 

Just after the story of Lazarus and the rich man, Jesus says to his disciples “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, “I repent”, you must forgive.’” This teaching is so difficult that the disciples immediately respond, “Lord, increase our faith!” 

 

It can’t be an accident that Jesus teaches about the demands of forgiveness immediately after telling a story about these seemingly irreconcilable men. True, the rich man never expresses contrition for ignoring the poor man at his gate. But then, Lazarus never has the chance to speak, either. Perhaps it’s naïve, but I wonder, if the two could sit down at the banquet together, what new world might come into being between them? 

 

But, of course, there’s that terrible chasm and its sharp stones between them. As I prayed about that chasm, I kept wondering, where is Jesus in all this mess? And then I knew. Jesus is the bridge over the chasm. Jesus, pouring out his life and his love on the Cross, bridges the gap that cannot be bridged. He makes a way where there is no way. He, who broke open the gates of hell and freed the souls trapped in their torment, lays down his tender body over the sharp stones of our hard and unbelieving hearts so that we, too, can be reconciled to God and one another, so that we can be made whole. 

 

We who follow Jesus know that there is no chasm that cannot be crossed. We know that the Cross of Christ is the bridge over which we walk from this life, with all its brokenness and separation, to the heavenly banquet. I have to believe that Lazarus and the rich man can also walk across that bridge, can finally look into one another’s eyes, clasp one another’s hands, and say to one another, “brother, welcome home.” 

 

In the world in which we live, this kind of reconciliation seems naïve, the stuff of kids’ imaginings. To the extent that that is true for us, we can join the disciples in praying, “Lord, increase our faith!” The God who makes a way out of no way, can bring even you and me to the place of belief and, through that belief, to the place of surrender and wholeness in Christ. 

Proper 20 C - September 18, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero, OHC

Pentecost, Proper 20 C - September 18, 2022

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13

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Studying this gospel passage has been quite a trip. I have read so

much about it that begins with something like: “Scholars are conflicted about the meaning of this gospel passage and cannot agree.” Or “This is a very difficult text.” Or “This is the hardest of Jesus’ parables.” Or “Interpret this parable at your own peril!” The parable strikes a chord because we don’t want to hear that a dishonest manager (or steward, as he is referred to in some translations,) was praised for his shrewdness. In fact, we want to get as far away from that idea as possible, thank you very much!

A long time ago in a different life, I worked as a Human Resources Administrator for a large corporation in New York City. My position required quite a bit of continuing training, and I remember one particular training seminar about knowing when people lie. We were taught how to tell from someone’s body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice whether they were lying. The seminar speaker began the seminar by saying that, the first thing she wanted to make very clear is that everyone lies. No exception. We all lie. And the first lie is to say we don’t lie. She said that those who get the most incensed about being lied to, are usually very good liars themselves.

Those of us who pray the psalms and read the scriptures every day are reminded, hour by hour, of the human condition, and propensity to point the finger and look at the sins of others. We are all saints and sinners. The best thing we can do for ourselves is to stop pointing the finger, come to terms with our own brokenness, give in to God’s eternal loving grace and be grateful for it.

It always works the same way. What annoys us the most, what we judge most, what makes our righteous indignation flair up the most is simply a mirror showing us the parts of ourselves we don’t want to see or accept or love. The degree of our hidden shame is proportionate to the degree of our intolerance or self-righteous judgment. So, of course, a gospel story in which Jesus is talking about a master commending a dishonest manager for acting shrewdly is going to make us very uncomfortable. We want the manager to pay for his dishonesty. We want a God who is just and fair. We want a God who is predictable and follows the rule of law. We want a God with whom we can reconcile our scorekeeping. Why? Well, because as long as we are busy blaming another for their dishonesty, we don’t have to look at our own.

And the idea that Jesus might be placing himself in the position of the shrewd manager? Shocking! In his great book, “Kingdom, Grace, Judgement”, American Episcopal priest, author, chef and Holy Cross Associate, the late Robert Farrar Capon wrote: “[Jesus] was not respectable. He broke the sabbath. He consorted with crooks. And he died as a criminal. Now at last, in the light of this parable, we see why he refused to be respectable: he did it to catch a world that respectability could only terrify and condemn. He became sin for us sinners, weak for us weaklings, lost for us losers, and dead for us dead.”

Jesus was repeatedly criticized and called upon by the religious authorities for his breaches of the law and of decent behavior- healing on the Sabbath, eating with those whom the religious leaders saw as despicable people, ignoring rules of ritual cleanness. None of these might seem particularly offensive today, so, what indecent or immoral individual would scandalize our sensibilities? Is it the woman who wants to get an abortion, the white-collar criminal, or the person transitioning to a different gender? We can be very certain those are some of the people Jesus would be hanging out with. 

By the time of today’s gospel passage, Jesus has been preaching the good news of the Reign of God, healing the sick, raising the dead, and stepping on the toes of every religious leader around Jerusalem. In his dealings with sinners and tax collectors he pronounces to them, “go, your sins are forgiven.” Those who have staked their lives on following the law to the letter do not appreciate this Jesus guy acting as God’s steward and going around forgiving debts. His message to the religious leaders, though, is that God is the eternal creditor and not them. The debts he is cancelling are owed to God, and God commends him for it. So, the Scribes and Pharisees grumble, but instead of answering their criticism Jesus tells a series of Parables:

A shepherd had one hundred sheep. One wandered off, and the shepherd, leaving the ninety-nine sheep behind, goes in search of the lost one. When he finds the sheep, he gathers his friends and rejoices.

A woman had ten silver coins. One disappears, so she lights a lamp and turns her house upside down until she finds it. When she finds the coin, she throws a party with all her friends, costing more than the coin’s worth.

A father had two sons. One demands his inheritance while his father is still alive, runs off to the city and squanders his money. Realizing he can’t possibly survive if he continues making the selfish choices he has been making, he decides to return home to daddy with a nicely prepared speech of repentance. His father seeing him from afar welcomes him home with open arms and throws a party to celebrate his son’s return. His faithful, generous, and devout older son wants none of it. But the father says: “This son of mine that was dead is now alive, the one who was lost is now found.”

A dishonest manager is about to be fired for squandering his master’s funds. Because he doesn’t want to do manual labor and is too proud to beg for charity, he goes around to all his employer’s debtors and cuts deals with them, so they’ll owe him hospitality when he loses his job. Yes, crafty, but he transforms a bad situation into one that benefits, not only him, but also others, and in doing so, repairs relationships. Surprisingly, the employer commends the manager for his shrewdness.

So, I can’t tell you what every sentence of this parable about the dishonest manager means and won’t try to do so. But I can tell you a few things I know about God.

• God seeks for us even when we wander off.
• God will turn our lives upside down to find us, and when we are found, God celebrates.
• God waits for us with open arms, ready to forgive us, even when our selfishness and self-interest has blinded us to the harm we cause ourselves and others.
• God commends us for repairing broken relationships and takes our expectations, perceptions, and preconceived notions and turns them upside down with a grace so crazy, it is incomprehensible to us. And we are called, not to earn it, but to live in it. It is a grace that is freely given. What? That’s right! It is when we consent to that grace that we are able to extend Christ’s love and forgiveness to others.

In God’s economy, Christ, the shrewd manager is squandering forgiveness left and right. The more we grow in our awareness of this, the more we come to realize we are not the scorekeepers. The one who is, has a very different idea of who we are. In the words of Barbara Brown Taylor, “To give in to grace is to surrender our ideas about who God should be in order to embrace God’s idea of who we are, and to have the good sense (simply) to say thank you.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Living Pulpit, 1995) ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+
found, God celebrates. 

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross - September 14, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross - September 14, 2022

• Isaiah 45:21-25
• Philippians 2:5-11
• John 12:31-36a

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O Cross, surpassing all the stars in splendor, world renowned, holier than all things, you alone were counted worthy to uphold the world’s ransom. Sweet the wood, sweet the iron, bearing so sweet a burden; we have here assembled to celebrate your praises, Alleluia. (Antiphon on the Magnificat for the Finding of the Cross) I've been listening to a series of lectures given at a recent preaching conference at Notre Dame University. One presentation in particular caught my attention. It was on preaching the parables of Jesus, and it was subtitled: “Explain. Exclaim. Proclaim.” I was a bit disappointed when the presenter said that the last thing we should do with the parables is try to explain them. Rather the preacher’s task is to exclaim and proclaim them anew, seeing the contemporary world as if through their eyes. I must confess that it is almost impossible for me to refrain from trying to explicate the mystery of the cross of Christ. There has been century upon century of attempts to explain, or at least understand, what was happening when Christ died on the cross. What was being wrought and by whom? Why was it necessary or was it? What was the human need and what was the divine response and was it efficacious? Anyone with even a glancing acquaintance with Christian theology is aware of the many theories or models that have been offered to help us wrap our minds, if not our hearts, around the mystery of this event so central for our Christian self- understanding. There are theories or models which stress the role of Christ as the victor over death or over that agent of death that we call the devil. Others emphasize the role of Christ as the perfect sacrifice, undoing the disobedience of our ancestral forbears. Or as the one who paid a certain debt to satisfy the moral outrage caused by human sin over against the stern face of a righteous and judging God. Still others draw our attention to the converting power of the perfect humility and self-emptying of Jesus the Christ. One thing that characterizes our human attempts to come to terms with the mystery of the cross is a sense that if only we could find the missing piece, a clue such as we might find in a mystery novel, we could finally understand it. But of course, the mystery of the cross of Christ is not at all like that of a mystery novel. It's not about some missing evidence or a hidden hint, access to which might enable us to make sense of it on our terms. No. The mystery of the cross is mystery in a totally other sense. It is a mystery that we must enter into and then explore further and further all our days. It is a boundless mystery, a relationship really, one that invites us more and more into the deep places of God. I'm not particularly wedded to any of these classic models of redemption or atonement, though I find some more interesting or helpful or suggestive than others. And I'm also not particularly enamored of catch phrases that try to encapsulate the Christian message in ten words or less. But I think there is a phrase, a meme, a slogan which our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry often uses, and I think he has his finger on a profound interpretive truth. It is the phrase, used to great effect at the marriage of Prince Harry and Meagan: “If it's not about love it's not about God.” If it's not about love, then it's not about the Gospel revelation of God given to us in Christ Jesus. Period. This is, as theologians might say, a fundamental hermeneutical principle. And it is a principle that needs to be applied with special rigor to any attempt to wrap our minds around the cross. The cross is all about love and nothing but love. Yes, it is a message of love that is embedded in a particular historical and political situation, which makes it messy and sometimes hard to comprehend. It is a message about love that meets evil, suffering and death head on. It’s a tough love. But it is above all a message of love and a sign of God’s enduring love for God's creation. It is not a sign of a vengeful God which a deficient Trinitarian theology ascribes to the Father. Nor is it a sign of a passive Son who is victimized by both the Godhead and the human order. Nor is it the magic work of the Spirit who is unable to do better than to pull a rabbit out of a particularly unfortunate hat. No. It is the work of the One God working out eternal love in a particular time and place, a place not so different from ours today. And any theology or spirituality that would lead us to think that the cross that we celebrate today is ultimately a tragedy rather than, in the classic sense of the term, a comedy is simply wrong. Before the gospel reading we sang the hymn “Come O thou Traveler.” It is one of over six thousand hymns written by the endlessly prolific Charles Wesley, the 18th century Anglican priest who, with his brother John, gave birth to the Methodist movement. One of the glories of Wesley was his deep conviction that, from first to last, the work of God—including and especially the work of the cross—is a work of love. In that hymn, which tells of Jacob wrestling with the angel, Wesley continues the scriptural story from Genesis. Before he releases him, Jacob demands the Angel (that is God) to name himself. And he does: Tis Love, tis Love! Thou diedst for me! I hear thy whisper in my heart: the morning breaks, the shadows flee. Pure universal Love thou art; thy mercies never shall remove, thy nature and thy name is Love. Others have said it before him, of course, and perhaps none more passionately or eloquently than the Lady Julian of Norwich. In memorable words at the end of her Revelations of Divine Love we hear this: Wouldst thou learn thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord's meaning In my book, this is the only safe and adequate interpretation of this unfathomable mystery that we celebrate today, the celebration of the Holy Cross of our Savior. It is of course a strange and awful love, a love which empties itself of all grasping, of all pretension, of all ego self so that in doing so it may give space for a cure, a remedy, a universal healing. And by its example it offers us a power to do likewise in this life and in the next. It is a promise and a hope ratified by resurrection. It’s no surprise that we want to understand this. And the work of unpacking and repacking this understanding will continue, as it has for centuries. But as the presenter from the Notre Dame conference reminds us about the parables: beyond explanation, our work is exclamation and proclamation. What can that mean? How do we exclaim the cross today? And how do we proclaim it? I think the short answer is this: we proclaim the cross by living lives that are themselves more and more self-emptying and less and less grasping and controlling and living into that difficult discipline or practice in thought, word and action. And we exclaim the cross when we notice such actions and such grace in the world around us, be they small or great, and acknowledge them. Oh wow. That seems so weak, doesn’t it? But if we start there, if we train our eyes to see how the power of the cross is still operating in us and around us and even occasionally through us, we will exclaim the cross, and its message will become self- explanatory. Explain, exclaim, proclaim. Brothers and sisters, we are doing this right now in a particularly concentrated and ritualized way as we once again offer, together with Christ and in Christ, this Eucharist which proclaims the death of the Lord until he comes. We exclaim it with our lips and in our hearts, in these or similar words: “Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life, Christ Jesus come in glory.” May we proclaim it, this mystery of the Holy Cross of our Savior, with our very lives. Amen.