Proper 26 C - October 30, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo, OHC

Pentecost, Proper 26 C - October 30, 2022

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
Luke 19:1-10

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

A children's song

Zacchaeus was a wee little man 

And a wee little man was he. 

He climbed up in a sycamore tree 

For the Lord he wanted to see. 

And when the Savior passed that way 

He looked up in the tree

And said, (spoken) “Zacchaeus, you come down! 

For I'm going to your house today!

For I'm going to your house today!”

        There's more, but I'll spare you. You can Google this children's song and listen to it on YouTube. You can also purchase the sheet music for $1.99, and it comes with suggested hand gestures.

We all know the story, or at least we think we do. Here is Zacchaeus, another tax collector, one of those shady characters, collaborator with the Roman oppressors, making a living by skimming off of the taxes collected and amassing great wealth. But this is not just another tax collector. Luke tells us this was the chief tax collector. He was a pariah, an outcast in his community, but also someone given grudging respect not because of his work, but because of his power. Luke seems to delight in telling stories about tax collectors along with their unsavory fellow travelers: the prostitutes.  

The story, as most of us know and as our little Sunday school ditty tells us, revolves around a wee little man. Zacchaeus is short, of small stature, maybe even tiny. This cannot have helped his social status in 1st century Palestine. Maybe he, like other short people who, by hook or by crook, make successes of themselves--however you define success--are dismissed as having a Napoleon complex or analyzed as having deep compensation needs. All rather unseemly.

I'm short.  Not that short: I'm five foot six, though shrinking daily. But that puts me about three or four inches below the average height of males in America. I've learned to joke about that and work around it. But it is something that people who don't fit the average profile learn early in life...people who are short or obese or living with disabilities or otherwise not filling societal expectations of beauty, something that women know perhaps better than men. And there is a whole raft of social science research which documents the financial disadvantages of being short. On balance, all other things being equal, for every inch of height, a male earns something like $1000 a year. Perhaps not a huge advantage, but $6000 or $7000 or more a year can make a big difference.  Think of compound interest over a lifetime. 

There are all sorts of explanations offered for this disparity. Some see it as implicit bias. Others as a kind of deep sociobiological fact which rewards those who might be more successful in finding a mate and procreating and surviving.  Some researchers note that it is the height advantage in the early teen years which makes a difference throughout the entire life cycle, that those who are taller at, say, 13 are more likely to be involved in group activities that require strength, such as sports, and which may serve as laboratories for leadership and self-esteem and self-confidence. Or maybe they just come from families with greater access to proper nutrition.  Some even suggest that taller children are more curious and are in the end brighter than their shorter colleagues. I don't know what our brother Zacchaeus would think about all of this. I know what I think about it.

 

        But there's a bit of a fly in the ointment concerning this story of Zacchaeus that I want to share with you. In 2004, Roberta Bondi, Professor Emeritus of Church History at Candler School of Theology, published a brief reflection on this Gospel passage.  She quotes a Methodist pastor and dear friend whom she heard preach on the story of Zacchaeus. And here's the way he told it:

        “There was once a bad, rich man in Jericho named Zacchaeus who heard that Jesus was coming to town and wanted to see him very much. When Jesus arrived, however, the crowds were thick, and Jesus was short so Zacchaeus couldn't see him. Then he hit on an idea. He would climb a sycamore tree.”

        She asked the pastor how he decided that Jesus was the short one in Luke's story. He answered, “I can't prove that he was, but look it up in the Greek. You really can't tell who ‘he’ refers to. As far as I'm concerned, however, Jesus was the short one.”

 

Think about that for a minute.  As heirs to a muscular Christianity, we're quite accustomed to thinking of Jesus as not only white but, shall we say, ripped. He's tall, he’s handsome, he physically stands out in a crowd, and he speaks with a booming voice. And people listen. But there's no evidence for any of this.  It is sometimes said that God created us in God’s image…and that we returned the favor. In many ways, the same can be said of our view of Jesus.  And that’s not altogether bad.  Our mental image of Jesus almost inevitably reflects our view of ourselves and of what our culture values.  I’ve been as deeply moved by images of Jesus as an African or Asian or Polynesian or Native American as I have been of him as a White man.  But who really knows what an average Palestinian of 2000 years ago looked like exactly?  If anything comes close, I’d bet on the image of Jesus as portrayed in early byzantine icons.  Surely we need to see ourselves in Jesus, limited though we must be by the historical fact of his being a male. Yet even here, I have been moved by Christa, the controversial crucifix at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that depicts Jesus as a woman on a cross.   

        But a short Jesus?  Somebody so small that folks in a crowd have trouble seeing him?  Could that be why he was always preaching on a Mount or from the prow of a boat?  Maybe Jesus needed a bit of a boost to be seen and heard and followed.  And as Scriptures teaches us, sometimes the Word comes to us in a still, small voice.

There’s a delightful story in our OHC history. It is related by Father Alan Whittemore who wrote a memoir of the early days of our order while he was marooned in Freetown, Sierra Leone early in 1947. It is an important record of our early members. Whittemore features the stories of some of the great men of those early days:  the Father Founder, Father Hughson, Father Sill, Father Alan, and so on. But he also includes stories of less distinguished brothers. One of my favorites is Father Louis Lorey.  

Whittemore begins his chapter with his dry, almost condescending, New England tone. He says: “God has room in his cloister for the little as well as the great. This chapter is about two ‘little ones’: Father Lorey and Father Webb. They were small in body as well as in intellectual caliber and they made an amusing spectacle when they stood together. The two were about the same height--or lack of it--but Father Lorey was old and Father Webb young; Father Lorey was fat and Charlie Webb, as we called him, was thin. But both were bald, and they both wore skull caps.” 

He talks about Father Lorey’s decades-long ministry at Saint Andrews School in Sewanee TN which the Order founded in its early days.  Father Lorey was known to the boys as ‘the teeny-weeny Father’ and was not much bigger than most of them.  He had, as Father Whittemore says, “…a simple affectionate piety and such trust in human hearts as removed all prejudices.”

Whittemore relates going on a mission to a Southern parish. The Rector had asked them to speak to the men at a neighboring prison.  One afternoon: “… after I had said my say, a bench was produced for Father Lorey to stand on. Otherwise the men could not have seen him. He clambered onto it and looked round him beaming. Then he launched forth and talked to them about their mothers, and about God's Love and His Cross. You could hear a pin fall.”

I find this deeply moving. Here is the voice of God coming from “the teeny weeny” father and moving the hearts of a very tough audience. I wonder if Jesus was like that. I wonder if Jesus needed a bench or a mountain in order to be seen or heard. But I don't wonder at the power of Jesus. Short or tall, Jesus looked up at Zacchaeus, this prominent social outcast hanging out in a tree so that he might get a look at Jesus, and called out to him: “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down for I must stay at your house today.”  

This must have come as a shock to the crowd, not to mention to Zacchaeus. Why in God's name would Jesus stay with the chief tax collector, with this collaborator, with this sinner? We don't know exactly. What we do know is that Jesus came to Zacchaeus’ house and Zacchaeus’ was changed. He was transformed. He was converted. Zacchaeus was seen by Jesus in that tree. And he was seen as something more than a collaborator and a con man.  Luke tells us that Zacchaeus stood in his house and said: “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor and if I have defrauded any one of anything I will pay back four times as much.” (Actually, the Greek says not that he will give to the poor but that he is already giving to the poor right now.)  And Jesus says, “Today wholeness, healing, salvation has come to this house. Because he too is a son of Abraham.” Maybe it’s no accident or irony that the name Zacchaeus literally means clean or pure.  Maybe Jesus saw in Zacchaeus a purity that neither Zacchaeus nor his community could ever dream of or imagine. And Jesus drew that purity out of him.

Jesus is always out visiting and calling, and we don't know when he's going to come to our neighborhood or to our house. We have a beautiful collect for the Fourth Sunday of Advent in which we pray that Jesus at his coming may find in us a mansion prepared for himself. But truthfully, how do you prepare your mansion for the coming of the Messiah? We may have fair warning and try, but sometimes Jesus just shows up and says, “Robert, come on down. I'm staying at your place tonight.” I protest: “Lord, my house is a mess, my mansion is in shambles.”  And I hear Jesus saying:  “Not to worry, we'll clean it up together.”  I hope you can hear that as well.

   

“Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he.” Maybe.  Whatever our stature, if like Zacchaeus we take a first small step, if we go out on a limb to see Jesus, if we climb the sycamore tree with our name on it, even if that tree that can sometimes look and feel like a cross…we may find that we have a house guest for the night and a mansion for all eternity. 

Proper 25 C - October 23, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

The Rev. Samuel Kenedy

Pentecost, Proper 25 C - October 23, 2022

Sirach 35:12-17
2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18
Luke 18:9-14

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

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

Our gospel lesson for today contains one of Jesus’ better-known parables.  In fact, one commentator I looked to for help with the sermon rued just how well known and how well-understood the parable is after some 2000 years of reflection on it by the church, and devoted rather little space to it in his commentary. And while nothing we hear today may surprise us, I think this story can serve as a reminder of the message of mercy and hope  that sits at the very heart of Luke’s Gospel.

Our lesson for today picks up after Jesus has begun his final journey to Jerusalem.  This journey in Luke’s Gospel begins with the healing of a group of lepers and then launches into a series of teachings from Jesus about the nature of the Kingdom of God. In the section in which we find ourselves today we find Jesus describes some of the characteristics of life in this Kingdom to help us begin to understand what are the values, the deep rhythms of wisdom that uphold the kingdom of God? What is a Kingdom-dweller’s life supposed to look like?   In last week’s lesson, Jesus taught his disciples about perseverance in prayer, and then this week he further describes some of the essence of Kingdom life by telling a story that is also couched in the imagery of prayer.  Admittedly, it starts out sounding a bit like one of our “a rabbi, a priest, and an imam walked into a bar” jokes, but in the end pierces right to the heart of the Gospel message.

In this story, Jesus tells us that “two men went up to the Temple to pray” – this would have resonated with his listeners as they were journeying with Jesus to do precisely the same thing at the Feast.  One of the men in Jesus’ story was a Religious leader and the other a tax collector.  Our Tradition has wrongly conditioned us to have a bit of an allergic reaction to any mention of Pharisees in the Text, and to think of them as the villains in any story that they may appear.  We would do well to remember that in Jesus’ day, unlike our own, tax collectors were considered far more villainous and suspect than religious leaders.  

But, as you’ve been paying attention to Luke’s narrative style in this Gospel, you are likely already suspecting an inversion of sorts in the moral order of the story.  This is something we know Luke loves to do this in his Gospel -- take our expectations about how the world works and then stand that moral order on its head  -- we think of the Beatitudes or the Magnificat as examples of this.  It’s a sort of extreme literary disorientation therapy that knocks us off our feet to then reorient us to Kingdom values.  Well, if that’s what you came to the text expecting, you won’t be disappointed here.  Jesus does precisely that.

So we’ve got these two fellows on their way to the temple, and the respected religious leader gets there and, I have to hand it to him, at least he doesn’t beat around the bush.  He gets right to the point. “God, I thank you… that I am not like other people.  And just in case God has forgotten who these “other people” are that he should evidently be concerned with, our fellow at prayer is ready to list them off, “robbers, villains, adulterers, -- or even like that guy – the tax collector.”

Now, while this is incredibly relatable and entertaining precisely because it’s so relatable, it’s also clear that this man is not really praying -- at least not to God.  Some of our English translations help tease that point out a bit more than others.  One reads, “The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself.”  This isn’t prayer.  It’s projection.  And that projection is just one element of a framework that helps that leader feel secure in who he is and in his standing in his community and relationship with God.  But as secure as he might feel in that moment, all of that projection is just a thin veneer of plaster over a thick, wall of desperation deep in the human soul.  

It's not just this poor religious leader who does this. We humans are all experts at building frameworks like these to help ourselves feel secure and included.  In fact, one of the fastest ways for us to build a facsimile of community is to first get clear about who we are not like, and build our community over and against the identity of another.  We see silly and rather innocuous examples of this way of creating community all the time.  What’s a quick way to build some rapport with fellow Rotarians? Well, poke fun at the Lion’s Club, of course, and if you’re a fledgling Lion’s Club member what do you do to feel more at home?  Well, crack a few jokes about the Rotarians.

This example of course is rather benign, and we know that kind of behavior is a bit silly even when we engage in it, but the striking thing is that it works.  More seriously, however, as humans, we tend to build cultures and religious communities through these mechanisms of individual and collective “othering” and scapegoating.  Theologian James Alison writes, “We know of no ethnic group anywhere on the face of the planet, no gang in the periphery of any major city which is not inclined to build its unity at the expense of a social other.”  The problem, of course, is that this “othering” is anything but innocuous -- and is the very seed of the division and violence we see all around us.

Perhaps it’s the universality of this tendency to “scapegoat” and “other” that leads Luke to address this story to a unique cast of characters.  In all the rest of his Gospel the groups or individuals engaged in conversation with Jesus are ones we can easily identify: Jesus’ disciples, a group of Pharisees, the young ruler, and so on.  But this story is addressed “to some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else” and it’s quite likely we are supposed to imagine this group as being comprised of both some of his disciples and some of the pharisees.  And if we think about it, this group cuts across every set of diametrically opposed pairs we could hope to name.  And if I’m honest, it cuts a path right to the core of my own heart more often than I would like to admit.

The reality is that the greatest danger to the manifestation of the Kingdom of God in our midst isn’t this cast of villains that the religious leader points to: robbers, evildoers, adulterers, and tax collectors.  In some sense he might as well have been listing Natsha, Boris, and Moriarty, because the real villain he has to face – the real villain I have to face -- is the part of me that is willing to participate in creating a cast of “others” to exclude so that I can feel secure – at least for a moment --  on the inside.  

But in the Kingdom of God, relationships and communities are formed in a radically different way.  Jesus teaches and then inaugurates through his death and resurrection a very different way of being together as humans -- a way of being together in which there is no need of a social other as there’s no scarcity of belonging that we have to compete for.  And as we drop our projections and desperate attempts at creating a place for ourselves over and against another we can finally begin to discover who we are and get relaxed into becoming who we were made to be.  The priest and theologian James Alison has an analogy for this experience that I’ve found helpful and memorable.  He compares this abundance of belonging in the family of God and its effect on one’s soul to the experience of being gently and steadily loved by a kind older relative, “Aunt Mildred,” as he calls her.  Alison contrasts spending time with her and it’s effect on the soul with the experience of meeting with a potential employer for a job interview.  In the job interview we find ourselves in competition for a limited resource – the job – and we are competing with a host of other candidates we suspect are infinitely more qualified than we are.  We don’t know the interviewer, and aren’t entirely sure what the criteria are that they will use to judge us.  So, he writes, we go “as smartly dressed as we can manage, with as polished a CV as the bounds of honesty will admit, and all the wrinkles of our life’s history ironed out.”

This is radically different from spending time with dear Aunt Mildred, where after our visit find ourselves a bit more relaxed, a bit more settled in our own skin, and a bit more free to love.  How is this possible?  Alison writes, “Because we know that Aunt Mildred likes us and wants what is good for us.  So when we are with her we don’t need to impress her, or convince her of our worth.  In fact we can let our masks down and allow ourselves to be teased and our little foibles to be giggled at.  You know her enough to know that she is trustworthy, not out to “get” you and won’t hold things she learns about you against you.”  THIS is a bit like the experience of being loved in the family of God and how it slowly does its work of transforming our hearts and frees us from the perceived need to compete with others for standing, belonging, worth, and value.

And the tax collector in this story?  Well, he seems to get this.   Jesus tells us that his prayer is in resonance with the wisdom of the Kingdom, and it is he who leaves the temple justified, at peace and in harmony with God.  

What is this prayer of his? It is quite simple.  And is one the desert Mothers and Fathers would recommend to us as the heartbeat of our own prayer lives: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

  

Note that he doesn’t project or point to an external cast of villains or extenuating circumstances.  He just stands squarely, as he is and asks for the mercy that we all need and that God is ever so ready to pour out upon us.  And just as the religious leader’s projection and “othering” is the seedbed for division and violence, the tax collector’s honest prayer for mercy can be the seedbed of hope and healing in our lives and in our midst.

May God, have mercy on us, my beloved fellow sinners.  In the name of God: Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing, Amen.

Proper 24 C - October 16, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Luc Thuku, OHC

Pentecost, Proper 24 C - October 16, 2022

Jeremiah 31:27-34
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Luke 18:1-8

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

We gather again this morning to encounter God in Word and Sacrament, as well as to give thanks to God for the far he has brought us and to offer ourselves, our petitions and intercessions for others to Him. This we do with faith, hope and trust that He is with us just as He has been with us in the past and that He will never abandon us in the future.

A woman in Kenya got married around 1965 and like every other woman of the time was expected to immediately bear and rear children to carry on the family name. She however stayed for 6 years before she gave birth to her first born child, a son. After that her womb seemed to have been closed again because she kept trying to conceive but could not. When the boy was 9 years old, he fell gravely ill with appendicitis which in the late 70’s and early 80’s was a killer illness in Kenya. Her life was crashing and her fear of being childless returned all over again. While the boy was in hospital recovering from the appendectomy and a co-infection picked up in the hospital, the mother decided to keep herself busy and went to work in her small scale farm with some ladies who were working for her as casual laborers. As is usual in my culture, as people work together they talk and sing. 

At some point, this mother overwhelmed with sorrow sat down and wept bitterly. One of the casual laborers a lady who had a horrible speech impendiment came and sat next to her, broke a twig from a branch that was laying nearby and on the ground drew a Cross. She then stood up and went back to continue working with the others without saying a word. The mother slowly got to her feet, picked up her hoe and joined her workers. Although outwardly nothing had changed, she had received hope inwardly and an assurance that she could not put in words. To cut a long story short, the boy recovered and when the mother went to fetch him from hospital, she had a vomiting episode followed by diziness and when the doctors tested her, she was found to be pregnant and not just with one child but with a set of twins. After that set of twins, she went on and gave birth to 6 other children and she is the proud mother of one of the larger families in my village. This story had a happy ending…most don’t. We shall come back to this in a moment.

In the first reading we heard this morning from the prophecy of Jeremiah, We hear the prophet speak a reversal of Judgement. Israel had to suffer exile for her sins but God intends to reverse the exile, restore them to their land and gives the promise of a new covenant. Israel will become a new People of God in some day to come. They will get to know God to the fullest sense and will have God’s law written in their hearts. Finally and most important of all, they will experience a complete and total forgiveness of sins. 

Our first reading gives the first sign of God acting to restore the covenant as re-population of the land with offspring of both people and animals. This Verse (Jeremiah 31:27) is important and relates to the story I gave in that while my friends mother was crying to God for children, she kept reciting this verse and claiming it for herself and she claims God heard and fulfilled this promise to her personally.

The exiles were lamenting in their misery, and being human like all of us, were most likely asking ‘why me’ in an effort to make sense of their situation. The end result was blaming God for punishing the wrong people although we do realize the truth of the fact that God occasionally punished the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation in scripture. 

This we can relate with today when we see the intergenerational consequencies on children, of parents, especially those sent to jail for commiting crimes. The fact that the sins of one generation has consequencies on another is however not the same as saying that God punishes an innocent group for the sins of another group that is guilty. The problem with sticking to this understanding of generational curses or punishment, however, is that when bad things like exile, war and the like come, people have a tendency to think they are facing the consequenscies of the behaviors of others and often fail to admit culpability for their own situation.

Verse 30 of our text, however, tells us that people will be punished for their own sins, not the sins of others. I, and hopefully I am not wrong when I say most if not all of us, have enough sins in my own life to justify any punishment from God. To blame someone else will not work. The old order has been turned over and a new maxim is put in place that, whoever eats sour grapes will have their own teeth set on edge… his and nobody elses!

God also promises a restoration of relationship with the people with a new covenant that will be characterized by the knowledge of God being planted in people’s hearts. This time will be an era where the people of God will include more than the inhabitants of Israel and Judah. The knowledge of God will be for all nations and languages. We know that although the restoration begun with the return from exile and the rebuilding of the Temple, it was not fully established until the coming of Jesus  who established a covenant not based on the law or ancestry, but purely on faith in him, whose death paid the price for our redemption and inclusion.  It is this Jesus whom we hear in the gospel today instructing us on how we ought to relate with God and others.

If we go back to the story we heard at the beginning, what the stuttering woman did to my best friend’s mother that morning in her small farm, Jesus does for us today in the Gospel through the story of the widow and the Judge. My friend’s mother so much needed a renewal of hope and so do we! We need encouragement time and again in our life of faith and especially in regards to prayer. The stuttering woman communicated her message by drawing a cross on the ground but Jesus tells a story. 

Two characters feature in Jesus’ parable… a Widow whom we have baptised Insistent and a judge baptized Unscrupulous. The Judge according to Jesus has neither decency nor a conscience. He is corrupt and only interested in amassing more for himself rather than serving justice. On the other hand the woman is a widow, she must be childless or a mother of girls only and that is why she is appearing to speak for herself in a culture that respected young boys more than their mothers; but what she lacks in money and male relatives, she has in courage and not just courage but persistent courage! She keeps returning to court until the judge acts, not because he decided she deserved justice but to spare himself from further annoyance. 

By giving this story, Jesus was not telling us of how God operates because that would depict God as a petty bureucrat or a reckless abusive parent. God, as we heard in the first reading, is not hard hearted or uncaring. God is the author of all justice and compassion and a reverser of curses. 

The person we are to immitate in this story is the persistent woman, and when we are in positions of authority should avoid the character of the Judge like a plague! Infact, the woman is a representation of God despite her ‘loud mouth’, or because of it!…God is ever attempting to break into our closed selves to draw us into a relation with Him and others. God is shouting to our ears and into our hearts yearning for justice for those we oppress, those we exclude. He is shouting to the unjust Judge in each of us and the purpose of our insistent prayer is to wear out our hardness of heart, to force us to do justice to ourselves and others. Our prayer is the widows voice, loud but sane insisting that things be different.

Most of us give up on prayer because we put God as the primary focus and keep thinking because he is an all knowing being, we are telling God what God already knows, or persuading God to do other than what He would not otherwise do, or even attempting to change God’s mind. However the primary focus and effect of prayer should be on me, on us. This is because God’s love is unconditional, His justice perfect, His mercy and compassion boundless. God Knows of our needs way before we do. We therefore ought to pray not to inform or change God, but to change ourseleves to fall in line with God. Prayer then becomes our declaration that we want to be opened up,  that we are not dependent on ourselves and that we do not know it all. In this we need to be confident, persistent and unconcerned with what others think about us. 

Prayer will help us check our attitudes, our doubts that make us feel unworthy, and misplaced humility. This morning Paul reminds us through his letter to Timothy that we should continue in what we have learned and firmly believed knowing from whom we learned it; God himself who writes His law direclty into our hearts. He reminds us that all Sacred Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for all good work. 

Paul goes ahead and urges us to proclaim the message, the goodnews, and be persistent while at it, whether the time is favorable or unfavorable. The stuttering woman in our story could not let a fellow woman and mother continue in anguish knowing there is something she could do. When a person is in pain or anguish, that would not be regarded as a favorable time to speak to them about the goodness of God as per conventional wisdom but not for this stutterer! Her love of neighbor, her empathy, her compassion, her firm conviction and her knowledge that the God of the good times is still God in the bad times, emboldened her! Because she lacked words…literally, she used the earth to proclaim the message of hope, the message that the Cross symbolizes! Paul urges us to convince, to rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching and why? Because these are evil days. The time is coming and is already here when people do not put up with sound doctrine but have developed itching ears and have accumulated teachers to suit their own desires. We have turned away from listening to the truths and have wondered away to myths. We have abandoned the discipline and blessings that come from perserverance for quick fixes!

God On The Mountain - song by Lynda Randle

Life is easy, when you're up on the mountain

And you've got peace of mind, like you've never known

But things change, when you're down in the valley

Don't lose faith, for you're never alone

For the God on the mountain, is still God in the valley

When things go wrong, He'll make them right

And the God of the good times

Is still God in the bad times

The God of the day is still God in the night

You talk of faith when you’re up on the mountain

But talk comes so easy when life's at its best

Now it’s down in the valley, of trials and temptations

That's where your faith, is really put to the test

For the God on the mountain is still God in the valley

When things go wrong, He'll make them right

And the God of the good times

Is still God in the bad times

The God of the day, is still God in the night

The God of the day, is still God in the night

Proper 23 C - October 9, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Ephrem Arcement

Pentecost, Proper 23 C - October 9, 2022

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

"Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving…be to our God forever and ever!  Amen.”  -Revelation 7:12

The babe in Christ is thankful when they receive something they really want.  The adolescent in Christ, on a good day, is thankful for the hope of one day receiving something they really want.  The mature in Christ is just thankful, whether they do or do not receive something they really want. 

Unconditional gratitude is a sure sign that one is well on their way to putting on Christ, who on the night before he was crucified gave thanks that God’s will was being accomplished through his own gift of self in the sacrificial offering of his body and blood.  In light of this, St. Paul would be inspired to write, “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”  Easier said than done!  It’s one thing to be thankful to God when your diagnosis turns out not to be life-threatening and quite another to be thankful when it does!  Is it really possible to have a heart so touched by God’s grace that it can’t help but give thanks whatever the circumstance?  Today’s readings are lessons on how to attain such unconditional gratitude.

The prophet Jeremiah lived during one of the most difficult times in Israel’s history.  Her identity as God’s own people along with her hope of God’s promises for her future were suddenly dashed when the powerful kingdom to the northeast, Babylon, invaded, plundered and took her away captive.  Who was she now?  And where was her God?  

The knee-jerk reaction of the vast majority of us who find ourselves in circumstances which we dread, like living in captivity in a foreign land, is, no doubt, to do everything in our power to liberate ourselves from the weight of the dread and, like Israel, to get back home as soon as possible.  Surely, this is God’s will, right?

Jeremiah, however, steers Israel in quite another direction.  Instead of being preoccupied about how you’re going to get yourself out of the mess you find yourself in, Jeremiah says to the Israelites, “build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce…take wives and have sons and daughters….” 

In other words, resign yourself, Israel, that you’re going to have to bear this yoke for quite a while and seek a new way of being in this world and living with your God.  

The temptation when bad things happen and our lives aren’t going according to plan, is to react by spending all of our energy on changing our circumstances instead of allowing the stripping away of our regular existence to cause us to find a deeper, perhaps more authentic, way of relating to God.  

Jeremiah, speaking on behalf of God, tells the Israelites that they should “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile…for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

He reassures Israel that God has not abandoned her at all and that this dreadful situation in which she now finds herself is serving to make God known in places God would otherwise not be known and is, in the process, serving to make Israel herself a more mature people.  

“O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”

Yet, let us be very careful here.  The fact that oppression exists in the world and that God can make good come out of it never justifies it, and the church must continue to do everything it can to rid the world of it.  But, the fact remains that the oppressive weight of the cross will at some level always remain as long as fallen humanity is a part of this broken world and sometimes we’re asked to bear its weight.  

Jesus Christ came not to save us from the cross but to save us through the cross.

Think of St. Paul, the one who told us to be thankful in all things.  This is the same Paul who, writing to Timothy, relates the many hardships he suffered for the sake of the gospel, even being chained like a criminal.  Yet, even in this, he gave thanks because God was at work bringing the saving power of Christ to those who would not encounter it if it weren’t for those very chains.  

Paul’s heart of gratitude was not that of a babe or adolescent in Christ whose gratitude is determined by what one does or does not receive from God but of one fully mature who knew how to be grateful in any circumstance.  What happened to Paul that allowed him to be so unconditionally grateful?  One thing is certain, it wasn’t simply something he just decided to do one day!

The Scriptures make clear that it was the encounter he had of the revelation of God’s corresponding unconditional love and mercy to one who so utterly did not deserve it, recounted three times in Acts and referenced by Paul himself in Galatians.

We don’t often associate humility with St. Paul, but I don’t think we should allow his bold confidence to be mistaken for personal arrogance.  Paul was not confident in himself.  His confidence came from a much deeper place.  His heart, like the heart of all the great saints, had become utterly humbled and held captive by the love of God he found in Christ.  Literally nothing else mattered than this love and making this love known.  It owned him, it defined him, it possessed him!  And if his personal inconvenience or suffering meant that this love would be magnified, then, thanks be to God…so be it.

So, gratitude isn’t just a choice we make when we wake up each morning.  Gratitude, especially unconditional gratitude, is what happens when a heart that was once trapped in its own broken world and maybe even antagonistic to the things of God is embraced nonetheless by God’s overwhelming love and mercy…when one undergoes the transforming power of the cross and rises to the freedom of no longer being one’s own but God’s from whom nothing in this world can separate us.

Let us not be mistaken, God is calling us to much more than a life where we simply return thanks for favors granted.  The call is to a far more radical way of being with God in this world…one that transcends the quid pro quo mentality that characterizes much of human, if not Christian, existence.  

Like the heart of St. Paul wholly possessed of the love of God, I think of another saint which the church will remember this upcoming Saturday, the great Teresa of Avila, who recounts in her autobiography the experience, which Bernini helped make famous, of the event when she is pierced with the Cherubim's arrow.  She writes, “I saw in his hands a long dart of gold, and at the end of the iron there seemed to me to be a little fire. This I thought he thrust through my heart several times, and that it reached my very entrails. As he withdrew it, I thought it brought them with it, and left me all burning with a great love of God. So great was the pain, that it made me give those moans; and so utter the sweetness that this sharpest of pains gave me, that there was no wanting it to stop, nor is there any contenting of the soul with less than God.”

This is mystical language of the highest order where pain and ecstasy coalesce in one overwhelming moment of absolute surrender and transcendence.  This is the passion of the cross and the bliss of the resurrection in one transformative encounter where nothing is left for the heart to desire but God and where gratitude for such a great gift is the heart’s only response…no matter what!   

And, yet, while we may never have such an intense mystical encounter as a St. Teresa or a St. Paul, over the course of our lifetime we do have such transformative moments of pain and ecstasy, of cross and resurrection, that likewise give us a taste of what life can be like when lived totally in the new creation of God’s love.  It is there, and only there, that God’s grace abounds no matter what the circumstance and no matter what hell we face and where we, along with St. Paul and St. Teresa, can in all things with bold freedom offer our lives of gratitude to God.  

In this Eucharist, may the veil be rent, and may we see in the crucified and pierced Christ the gratitude of God grateful for the opportunity of showing forth unconditional mercy and love in the flowing blood and water from the Savior’s side…and with Teresa be pierced straight through the heart that such a love is ours!

Feast of the Dedication - October 4, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

The Rev. Matthew Wright

101st anniversary of the dedication of Saing Augustine's church - October 4, 2022

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

One hundred and one years.  The Chapel of St. Augustine has officially now entered its second hundred years of life.  Which is to say that now for over one hundred years, prayer and worship have been maintained in this place.  

“Lift up your hearts.”  “We lift them up unto the Lord.”  “Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.”  “It is meet and right so to do.”  “It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, holy Father, almighty, everlasting God.”

Our bounden duty.  I’ve found myself thinking about duty this morning, as I’ve reflected on the dedication of this place.  Duty is a word we tend to shy away from on contemporary spiritual scene—it’s way too heavy and negative.  In our 1979 prayer book revision, “It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty” of course became “It is right, and a good and joyful thing.”  And my experience of worship is often joyful.  But not always.  And when it isn’t, I still show up, because it’s not always about joy, sometimes it’s simply about offering my bounden duty into the universe.

This chapel was of course dedicated as a monastic chapel from its start.  Which means that it was always intended to carry the Daily Prayers of the Church and to celebrate daily the Holy Eucharist.  And monastics have always understood, perhaps better than others, that while, yes, we may come to our prayers for joy, or peace, or intimacy with our Beloved—we also come out of duty.

A good synonym would be responsibility.  The idea that human beings have a responsibility to offer prayer and praise into the universe, that perhaps somehow our acts of worship are even necessary for the maintenance of the world, is one that the contemporary church has largely lost.  But the best of our theology has always understood that prayer and worship are not just for ourselves—for our own personal growth and development, or for getting that spiritual fix we crave.  They’re also for the sake of the world.

Fae Malania, in her book The Quantity of a Hazelnut, writes, “That is why the Daily Office of the Church matters so much.  This is a prayer we can offer for the merest stranger, for someone we dislike, for a sorrow we haven’t encompassed, a problem we haven’t understood. We can offer it for a world of hungry children our hearts are too small to hold, for the unknown victim of a sin we’ve never even thought of, for peace in a world that fills us with a scared surprise.  We can offer it, over and over again, for people we love, and needs we know.

“Saying the formal psalms and prayers, following in obedience the rich and ordered prayer of the entire Church, adding my small voice to its perfect harmony, I turn the whole river of grace towards those for whom I pray. Not I pray for them. Adam, all Man, prays. The whole Church prays. The whole Christ prays.  Let me remember to find a little time for this, even if it means taking a little trouble.”

This church was built as a place dedicated to that remembrance, to the carving out of that time, the taking of that trouble.  And in doing that work, you hold that possibility alive for all who come here, and for all those who cannot come here.  This is a place where the whole Christ prays, or better, a place where we open to the prayer of the whole Christ for the whole Christ.

  An online dictionary tells me that dedicate means “to devote to sacred use through solemn rites.”  Well what exactly is the sacred use that a church is devoted to?  One of my favorite answers is: inefficiency, sacred inefficiency.  In a world driven by efficiency, productivity, and profit, the Church opens us to a world that refuses to play by those rules.  In her book Things Seen and Unseen, Nora Gallagher writes that the life of the Church “calls into consciousness the existence of a world uninhabited by efficiency, a world filled with the excessiveness of saints, ashes, smoke, and fire; … It tells of journeys and mysteries, things “seen and unseen,” the world of the almost known.  It dreams impossibilities…”

This chapel inhabits that world and invites all who come here to dream impossibilities.  And in the polarized and contracted landscape we currently inhabit, that is crucial work indeed.

In the 1979 liturgy for the dedication of a church, the bishop prays, “Lord Jesus Christ, make this a temple of your presence and a house of prayer. Be always near us when we seek you in this place. Draw us to you, when we come alone and when we come with others, to find comfort and wisdom, to be supported and strengthened, to rejoice and give thanks.  May it be here, Lord Christ, that we are made one with you and with one another, so that our lives are sustained and sanctified for your service.”

May it be here that we are made one with you and with one another.  That is also the work to which this place is dedicated—to be a place where we become more conscious of our oneness with God and one another, a place where the marriage of heaven and earth takes place.  It’s a place where we cultivate both a vertical relationship with God through the awakening of our inner lives, and a horizontal relationship with God, through relationship with, and worship shared with, our neighbor, which of course forms the two beams of the cross, the vertical and horizontal, which mapped over the human body, intersect in the heart.  And so perhaps we can say that a church building is in fact an icon or a sacrament of the heart, that place where we flow into God and God flows into us.

I often have thought of this church in particular as a just such an icon.  Every day as the community gathers for Eucharist, we form a circle around the altar, and the two arms of the circle gradually weave into the center, where they receive the Body and Blood of Christ, and are then sent back out into the world.  It often seems to me in those moments that this church is actually, in a very real and literal sense, the lungs and heartbeat of the Body of Christ, where we join the breath of the Spirit and the rhythm of God’s own pulse.

Cynthia Bourgeault writes, “Mercy is the life blood that flows through the Mystical Body of Christ.”  Well I often imagine that we are all blood cells within the body of Christ, and we come here into this heartbeat, through the Daily Office and the Daily Mass, in order to be oxygenated, infused with fresh mercy, and sent back out into the rest of the Body.

In one of her visions, the 14th century mystic Julian of Norwich saw the blood of Christ flowing copiously throughout all creation.  She writes, “The abundance was like the drops of water that fall off the eaves of a house after a great shower of rain, which fall so thick that no man can number them with earthly wit. [...] This showing was alive and active, and hideous and dreadful, and sweet and lovely.”

And then she says, “And then it came to my mind that God has made plenteous waters on earth for our assistance and for our bodily comfort because of the tender love he has for us, but... there is no liquid that is made that it pleases him so well to give us [as his dearworthy blood], for just as it is most plentiful, so it is most precious…

“And the blood is of our own nature, and all beneficently flows over us by the virtue of his precious love... The precious abundance of his dearworthy blood descended down into hell, and burst their bonds and delivered all that were there... the precious abundance of his dearworthy blood flows over all the earth and is quick to wash all creatures from sin...

“The precious abundance of his dearworthy blood ascended up into heaven to the blessed body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and there it is within him, bleeding and praying for us to the Father... and evermore it flows in all heavens rejoicing in the salvation of all humankind that are there and shall be, completing the count that falls short.”

She sees Christ’s blood circulating throughout all the realms—hell, earth, and heaven.  As if it is coursing through a great inter-realmic circulatory system, flowing through all the worlds with forgiveness and healing and love.  But for blood to flow, it needs a beating heart.  Otherwise, it grows cold and stagnant in our veins.  And that is what this place does.

Which brings us back to duty.  It is our duty as Christians to keep the heart of Christ beating in the world, flowing mercy to all the realms—and we do that by showing up, and lifting up our hearts to God—when it’s joyful, when it’s hurts, and when it’s simply boring.  For it is our bounden duty, and the bounden duty of this place to stay true to work to which it was dedicated: a slow and inefficient work that remains as steady as a heartbeat, as necessary as breathing.

Proper 22 C - October 2, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Pentecost, Proper 22 C - October 2, 2022

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Some of you may know that throughout the month of August I walked the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, in northern Spain on the Camino Francès. Most days, I spent up to 8 hours walking. Much of that time was also spent in prayer.

One of the several insights that came to me through this embodied prayer is that “I matter and I don’t matter.” Both of these paradoxical statements are true about me. 

I matter to the God who loves me a great deal. You do too. We all do. And, my egoic false self, whom I often think I am, does not matter in the grand scheme of things. At times, God might think that egoic self is cute, at best, but not essential to who I am in God’s eyes.

I am called to emulate Jesus’ self-emptying so as to be more willingly, more fully, more completely God’s lover.

*****

Jesus’ parable in this morning’s gospel evokes this self-emptying. But it is difficult for modern hearers to interpret. There is a lot of interference with what Jesus might want us to take away from this parable.

I would venture that one conclusion we could draw from this parable is that we need to do God’s work in all humility and as our self-evident duty. I can get firmly behind that message as a Christian and as a monk.

But the missing piece for me in this parable is love: love for God, love for ourselves and love for our fellow beings. It is in response to God’s loving us and out of love for God that we feel impelled to do God’s work in the world.

*****

The interference with Jesus’ main message here comes from two scandals for modern hearers. Literally in Greek, the word scandalon signifies “the means of stumbling.” 

In interpreting this parable, we stumble on Jesus’ apparent unquestioning acceptance of the institution of slavery.

We also stumble on the parable’s master apparently qualifying us as worthless. Is that master a simile for God? That isn’t a necessary interpretation of the parable. But Jesus seems to indicate that we are to identify with the so-called “worthless slaves.”

*****

If Jesus walked the cities and towns of our world today, would he still use slavery as an image for humble listening and obedient cooperating with God? I don’t believe so.

But in his days, the relationship between a master and his slaves was a readily understandable image. It was an everyday resonant image. Just as his many agrarian images resonated with the experience of his hearers.

It’s not enough, but it seems to me that Jesus is not defending or praising slavery per se in this parable.

*****

The other means of stumbling is to be qualified as worthless people. That can be revolting for most modern persons. But particularly so for those of us who have had to claim our self-worth and attempt to have it respected. Our worth is easily neglected by dominant groups of society whose self-interest it does not serve.

This is particularly true for women and persons of color in our society. But there are more groups of people whose worth is not upheld by the dominant cultures. How can non-privileged groups hear this parable today?

*****

I believe today’s parable must be interpreted in light of Jesus’ complete teaching through his life and passion.

On which side of the parable is Jesus standing; that of the ungrateful master or that of the reliable, compliant and unappreciated slave?

Towards the end of his earthly ministry, Jesus emphasized the loving element of our relationship with God.

In John 15:14-16, he says:

You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.

We are not servants, or slaves, any longer. We are chosen friends of God. And God takes off his dinner clothes to take the role of a slave to wash the feet of his disciples. And this to the great dismay of a scandalized Peter.

In light of passages such as this and in light of Jesus’ passion, we know that Jesus stands on the side of the servants, of the slaves.

*****

It is out of loving friendship that we are to be worthy servants of God and one another. We are to serve out of gratitude and love. Abba God loves us as God’s children, not as slaves.

Our love, our self-giving, and our self-emptying come from a place of safety, dignity and self-respect. We have self-worth and we serve in love.

*****

I think Jesus’ parable of this morning insists on our not claiming pride and superiority for doing what Love commands us to do.

Are you a servant leader in your life and in the world? Very well. You are doing Love’s duty, nothing more. 

Love calls us all to that same duty. And God loves you, no matter how well or haltingly you are doing your duty. And God is at your feet, serving you, loving you. 

Can you resist answering that Love?

*****

One of our post-communion prayers enjoins us “to love and serve [God] with gladness and singleness of heart; through Christ our Lord.”

Let’s do that in all humility.

Amen.