The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 11, July 19, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Ephrem Arcement, OHC

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, July 19, 2026

Genesis 28:10-19a
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

Click here for an audio of the sermon

In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the great mythologist Joseph Campbell describes the narrative pattern of the hero myth as follows:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are encountered there, and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Campbell chronicles this narrative process of the hero myth through seventeen chronological stages, each infusing the protagonist with new experiences that gradually transforms his or her character into its destined ideal: a hero who has undergone adventure, transformation, and return to become the boon, or a blessing, to those yet to undergo the journey themselves.  The “thousand faces” of the hero’s journey refers to the multiple iterations that this universal, mythic journey manifests.  Underneath, though, for Campbell, there is only one transformative monomyth of adventure, transformation, and return.

This weekend one of the most paradigmatic of these hero journeys hits the big screen in the highly anticipated adaptation of The Odyssey by the great filmmaker Christopher Nolan.  The Bible, too, is full of these hero journeys beginning with Abram who is transformed into Abraham and his grandson, who we hear about today, Jacob who will be transformed into Israel. 

Up to this point in the story, Jacob, whose name means “supplanter,” has usurped his twin brother, Esau, at every turn.  Even at his mother’s bidding, Jacob will come to assume and own his identity as a trickster all to get what was not rightfully his, his father’s blessing.  Even though a twin, he is not the first-born twin.  He is the second…and his supplanting nature is memorably depicted in the story even in his birth with his tiny hand firmly fixed on his brother Esau’s equally tiny ankle.  Ever-grasping Jacob refuses to stand in the shadow of his brother and rightful inheritor of the blessing of the father and the promise of God.  So, all of his life, he grasps and strives and connives to supplant his brother to be somebody his society and religion said he could not be.  And yet, the irony at the heart of the story is that all along Yahweh, his god, had supplanted custom and already chosen him to be the son of blessing.  But to realize this, Jacob has to go on a hero’s journey of adventure, transformation, and return.

The story today picks up with Jacob on the run, living in fear of his brother’s retribution.  It’s here in the moment of his own, personal existential crisis that he meets his match.  With a stone for his head, he lies down and dreams of a ladder connecting heaven to earth with God’s messengers, angels, ascending and descending on it.  But the message does not come from these messengers but directly from God standing right beside him.  God’s message is a message not of castigation or reproach but one of assurance and promise.  Jacob learns that his god is with him to fulfill the promise of Abraham through him, just as he so desperately desired.  As he rouses himself, his eyes are awakened to new dimensions and exclamation says, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!  How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”  For us, today, the journey ends here…but not for Jacob.  His transformation is only beginning and won’t be complete before having to wrestle with this god and be perpetually wounded in the fight.  Jacob will indeed be the vessel through whom the blessing of God flows, but it’s through a wounded, limping, humbled vessel…one who has gone through the fire and whose ego-ambition has been supplanted by God.  

But this is a lesson for another sermon in the weeks ahead, today the focus is on a very particular stage of this hero’s journey.  The truth discovered at this stage is a truth that appears again and again in the journey of spiritual maturation…it is the moment of awakening.  Ironically this happens while Jacob is asleep.  And maybe there’s a lesson in this irony…it’s only when we let go of control in our wakened life that the divine in our subconscious minds can make itself known.  And what is the revelation that here awakens Jacob?  It is the fact that his God, Yahweh, the God of the promise, is with him in this deserted place with only a stone for a pillow.  It’s the insight that it’s in the ordinary where the extraordinary is discovered and that he is now in God’s house (the literal meaning of Bethel) …that it’s when you’re worn down by running away from the thing you fear most and have to just stop over sheer exhaustion that you encounter the awesomeness of God and the gate of heaven.  

Jacob’s journey of awakening and discovery reminds me of another hero’s journey, the journey of Thomas Merton who chronicles a very similar experience.  After living about sixteen years as a Trappist monk in rural Kentucky, Merton, suffering from chronic back pain, goes to downtown Louisville to see a doctor.  While walking on a busy street corner he is suddenly stunned by what he sees.  He describes it as follows:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness….  And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun…. Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

“How awesome is this place!  This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”  Sound familiar?  

I have often wondered if anybody else on that busy day on Fourth and Walnut saw what Merton saw.  Probably not!  But why did he see it?  Was it a moment of total sovereign revelation?  I don’t think so.  Merton had spent sixteen years giving himself over to the monastic way of life and learning how to open himself up and listen deeply with the ear of his heart.  His spiritual senses were attuning themselves to the presence of God everywhere.  He was, in other words, ripe for something like this to happen.  And it did!  “The gate of heaven is everywhere” is Merton’s great insight…and he challenges us to awaken our spiritual senses to see it, hear it, taste it, touch it, and smell it in the everyday, ordinary moments of our seemingly mundane lives.  

Pope Francis used to repeatedly say that God is a God of surprises and that we never know when God is going to surprise us.  We, therefore, need to develop what he called “a contemplative gaze” so that we don’t miss those divine surprises.

So, at the heart of our journey in our life with God is found one of life’s greatest lessons.  With Jacob we must close our eyes to the world around us and “fall asleep,” as it were, to the phenomenal world and awaken to the numinous depths within.  It is there that the awesome presence of God awaits us.  We don’t have to wait until Sunday morning or a moment of crisis to encounter this presence.  It abides with us!  And with Merton we give ourselves to lives of prayer and deep listening, ever sensitizing ourselves to the “deep calling unto deep,” so that with Pope Francis we can awaken from our slumber and return to our awakened state each morning ready for the adventure in God that awaits us.  

One further lesson in the Jacob story…this process of awakening to the vision of God in the hero’s journey is not easy and comes at a price.  It’s on a very hard, uncomfortable stone that you will have to sometimes lay your head.  It’s not what we would have chosen, and it is often what we wrestle with God to accept…but it is this very stone which becomes the catalyst of awakening and is transformed into a monument to God.  

The lesson Jesus teaches us today is that in this process of transformation there are weeds encroaching on us our whole lives.  Patient endurance, putting up with the weaknesses of body and behavior, as our Holy Father Benedict memorably put it, is not just a necessary burden, it is the very virtue transforming us into someone who will one day shine like the sun.  For Jesus, and for those in him, the good news is that the adventure we’re on is one much greater than any hero’s journey…and the transformation and boon of blessing far exceeds anything previously imagined.  We’re on a journey not just of adventure, transformation, and return…we’re on a journey of adventure, transformation, and transcendence into a whole new mode of being…what he called eternal life…and that this eternal life isn’t in some far away kingdom reserved for us when we die…but in the simple, but pregnant, moments of our everyday lives.  Let anyone with ears listen!  And let anyone with eyes see…we’re all shining like the sun!

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10, July 12, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 12, 2026

Genesis 25:19-34

Romans 8:1-11

Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

In the name of our Loving, Liberating and Life-giving God. Amen!

Jesus leaves the house that day and walks down to the water. The crowd that gathers is so large that he has to push off in a boat just to have room to speak, while everyone else stands crowded along the shore. And there, with the sea at his back and the fields probably visible somewhere behind the people, he tells a story about farming.

It is worth pausing on how ordinary that story would have sounded to his first listeners. Nobody in that crowd had ever tested the pH of a field or laid down seed in neat, irrigated rows. In first-century Palestine, you scattered the seed first and plowed it under afterward. You threw it across the path, across the rocky patches, into the weeds, and onto the good ground, all in the same sweeping motion, because you could not always tell in advance which parts of the field would produce and which would not. Then you waited for rain that you could not control, over a harvest you could not guarantee. Every farmer in that crowd would have been nodding along, thinking, yes, that is exactly how it goes.

So when Jesus describes seed falling on the path, on rocky ground, among thorns, and on good soil, he is not describing something strange or symbolic to begin with. He is describing an ordinary Tuesday. The strangeness comes later, in the ending, and in what the story assumes about the sower who keeps throwing seed onto ground that, by any sensible calculation, is not going to produce anything.

Notice, too, how the story is framed. It opens with Jesus saying, "Listen!" and it closes with "Let anyone with ears listen." Whatever else this parable is doing, it is asking for our full attention, not our anxious diagnosis. And it arrives in Matthew's Gospel at a hard moment: the chapters just before this one are full of misunderstanding and outright opposition to Jesus' ministry, and the chapter will end with his own hometown rejecting him. Matthew is writing to a community that knew what it was to proclaim good news and watch much of it fall on ground that produced nothing — through persecution, through poverty that scattered people from the region, through false teachers sowing confusion inside the church itself. This parable was first heard by people who needed reassurance that a disappointing public response did not mean their message was wrong, or their labor wasted.

That is where I want to start today, because it is easy to hear this parable and immediately turn it into an inventory of ourselves. Which soil am I? Am I the hard path, closed off and unreceptive? Am I the rocky ground, quick to catch fire with enthusiasm and just as quick to burn out when life gets hard? Am I choked by thorns, distracted by ambition or worry or the hundred small hungers that crowd out anything deeper? I suspect most of us, if we are honest, have been all four kinds of soil at different points in our lives, sometimes in the same week. I know that when I was young, this parable was taught to me almost entirely as a checklist for self-improvement: figure out what is wrong with your soil and fix it. It is a tiring way to hear good news, because it turns the gospel into one more thing you are failing to get right.

But look again at where Jesus puts the weight of the story. He does not linger on the soils nearly as long as he lingers on the sower and on the harvest. And when the interpretation comes, in the second half of our reading, it is offered almost as an afterthought, a clarification added because the story on its own was too open, too strange, too likely to be misunderstood. The center of gravity in this parable is not the quality of the ground. It is the character of the one doing the sowing.

Picture that sower again: walking a field, throwing seed in every direction, including places that everyone standing nearby could see were hopeless. Not one seed reserved for the good ground and withheld from the rest. Not one calculation of odds before the throw. This is not a cautious, efficient sower rationing precious seed for maximum yield. This is a lavish, almost reckless sower, acting as though there is no such thing as too much seed, no soil too far gone to be worth the risk. If you have ever been on the receiving end of that kind of extravagance — loved by someone who did not first check whether you deserved it — you know it does not feel like sound business practice. It feels like grace.

That, I think, is the first piece of good news buried in this familiar story: the parable is not primarily asking whether you are good soil. It is telling you what kind of God is doing the sowing. This is a God who does not sort us first, who does not calculate our likely returns before showering us with love. God's word goes out toward hardened ground and rocky ground and weed-choked ground with the same generosity it goes out toward the ground already prepared to receive it. Nothing about our failures — the times our hearts were closed, the times we scattered under pressure, the times ambition or anxiety choked out something truer — makes God stingier with the seed. There is always more where that came from.

The second piece of good news is that none of us is only one kind of soil, forever. The path, the rocks, and the thorns are not fixed identities assigned to certain people while others get to be the good soil. They are conditions — seasons, really — that any one of us can move through. Hardened ground can be broken open. Rocky ground can have its stones cleared. Thorns can be pulled. We are not seeds, locked into whatever patch of earth we happened to land on; we have the strange and demanding freedom to notice our own condition and to let it change. That is part of what it means to keep showing up to listen, week after week: to let something soften that had gone hard, to let roots go down deeper than the last hard season allowed.

And then there is the ending, which is the part I think we are most tempted to skip past too quickly. Jesus does not conclude with a modest, reasonable harvest. A good year for a first-century farmer might yield seven or eight times what was sown. Jesus says thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold. That is not agricultural realism; that is a promise of abundance that breaks the scale we normally use to measure return on investment. The point is not simply, keep trying and eventually something will grow. The point is that when God's word does take root, it produces far more than the effort put into it could account for. We are not meant only to endure; we are invited to expect abundance we cannot engineer or predict.

There is one more thing worth naming before we close. Paul, writing to the Romans, tells his readers that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, because the Spirit of God dwells in them. I think that is close to the heart of this parable too. The sower is not standing over us with a clipboard, grading our soil. The seed that has already been planted in us is not something we manufactured through our own discipline or worthiness; it took root because the Spirit of the very sower who planted it also dwells within us, doing the slow work of clearing stones and pulling weeds that we could never manage entirely on our own. That is not permission to stop tending the ground of our own hearts. It is the reason we can tend it without dread, trusting that the outcome was never solely up to us in the first place.

So perhaps the truest response to this parable is not anxious self-examination but something closer to trust, followed by imitation. Trust that the sower sowing in us is patient, generous, and unbothered by our rocky or thorny seasons. And imitation, because we too are sent out to scatter seed without first demanding proof that the ground is worthy. Speak the kind word to the person who seems closed off. Offer forgiveness before it is requested. Show up for the neighbor whose soil, as far as you can tell, looks like nothing but path and rock. You will not always see what grows. But the sower we follow was never stingy with the seed, and the harvest, when it finally comes, is always far larger than anyone had a right to expect.

Let anyone with ears, listen. Amen.

Benedict of Nursia, Monastic, c. 543.

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Francis Beckham, OHC

Benedict of Nursia, Monastic, c. 543.

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Let us pray. "We give you thanks, almighty God, for the Saints of the Benedictine family; and we pray that the zeal of the holy monks and nuns of the ages may inspire us to holiness of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.” Amen. 

In the 1999 comedy “Office Space,” Peter Gibbons, a young corporate drone working a soul-crushing job in the tech sector, has an epiphany. After years spent sludging through, doing “just enough not to get fired” from his job, he agrees to undergo hypnotherapy with his girlfriend in a half-hearted attempt to rescue his equally frustrating relationship. During the session, he begins to let go of attachments, worries, and cares associated with his job, his managers (he has eight, by the way, meaning that when he messes up, he has eight different people coming by his desk to tell him about it), his toxic relationship, and even the pointless expectations of the prevailing culture. This is, arguably, a healthy new outlook for Peter but, unfortunately, there’s a bit of a snag: the temporary trancelike state that enables him to see so clearly for the first time inadvertently becomes permanent when the hypnotherapist keels over from a heart attack before bringing Peter back out of it. 

Locked now into a perpetual state of hypno-bliss, Peter begins moving through his daily life completely unconcerned about anything aside from pursuing his newfound dream of “doing nothing.” Responsibilities, consequences, money, other people’s opinions about him – none of it matters to him anymore. He does continue showing up to work, but only when he feels like it. He finally asks out the pretty waitress he’s had a crush on for ages and she says yes. Bob and Bob, a pair of “efficiency consultants” brought in by the company basically to fire people, end up becoming enamored with Peter’s aloof, relaxed confidence, and – in a move that says a lot about how much corporate culture just loves rewarding incompetence – actually plan to promote him. 

Of course, the Bobs aren’t the only ones who notice Peter’s new outlook. When his burned-out work friends chide him about his deteriorating job performance and seemingly lazy attitude, he responds with surprisingly deep conviction. “We don’t have a lot of time on this earth!” he declares. “We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements.” It’s a really good line. And in a real sense, it’s a line that changed my life. 

You see, during a particularly frustrating time in my early professional career, I began questioning whether the large financial services firm I worked for really had my best interests at heart the way they said they did. According to the HR material, I was one of their approximately 100,000 “most valued assets,” but I couldn’t help noticing that when we posted our first billion-dollar profit, their gratitude for us was mainly expressed by tabletop signs in the cafeteria exclaiming, “It takes a lot of zeros to make a billion!” Not surprisingly, none of those additional zeros managed to find their way into my paycheck.

Like Peter Gibbons, I knew I was a drone, but I also knew I was relatively safe. If I managed to numb myself enough, I could keep working for the company, pumping out tedious copy for marketing material, maybe getting a promotion, and hopefully retiring by the time I was seventy. But try as I might to just accept and bear it, I wasn’t happy. And that line, “We don’t have a lot of time on this earth! Human beings weren’t meant to spend it this way,” kept going through my head more and more often, until I finally decided: If I had only limited time, I didn’t want to sacrifice it to a corporation that couldn’t care less about me. I wanted to do something worthwhile with it. The pursuit of that thing would eventually lead me on a years-long journey through numerous monasteries and houses of various religious orders. But the first one was Benedictine. 

One morning at about five o’clock, in the darkened choir of a large Benedictine Abbey on the west coast, I found out for the first time what it actually takes to live a life of purpose. As the monks rose from their stalls to begin praying the office of Vigils, the precentor intoned the Invititory: “Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, we have left all things to follow him.” Then, in unison, the rest of the monks chanted the beautifully haunting line in response, repeating it several more times during the course of Psalm 95, the Venite. And I knew. 

In time, I gradually came to understand that Saint Benedict’s plan for teaching his monks how to follow Christ – to give up all things and seek God alone – was to establish the monastery as a school of the Lord’s service, a place where ordinary people come to learn how to follow the Gospel in the same way as the community of Believers described in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” This is none other than the ideal Saint Benedict invites us to strive for every day, right here, in this monastery: to hear and study the Word, to be community to one another, to share the Eucharist, and to pray for each other and for the world. 

Saint Benedict understands that the Believers in Acts are living the way they are because they have heard and embraced the Gospel of Jesus, and they are orienting their whole lives toward living as Jesus taught. Indeed, the Acts of the Apostles is a literary continuation of the Gospel of Luke, both written by the same person and intended to be read in sequence. So, they have, as Jesus proclaims in our Gospel reading from Luke today, heeded Jesus’ invitation and left all things to follow him. They are using the Gospel as their rule of life. Saint Benedict’s intention in writing his Rule several centuries later is by no means to replace the Gospel, but to help his nuns and monks follow it as faithfully as possible within the contexts of their own times and places. For fifteen hundred years, this has worked, because it is founded on one thing alone: the timeless desire of the human heart to seek, and to be found by, Christ. 

The shared vision of the Believers and Saint Benedict of simplicity and love of God and neighbor is a far cry from the fundamentally disordered obsessions of our modern social, political, and economic structures, and it was equally counter to the decadence, chaos, and violence of Saint Benedict’s time. And so, for the sake of the salvation of souls, he makes it clear that we have a solemn duty to show forth to the world that another way is possible through lives of peace and prayer. “Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way,” he tells us in the Rule. Just imagine what a difference each of us could make if we really committed ourselves, every day, to being Jesus’ presence in the world. 

As appealing as that sounds – and we should do it – Jesus himself levels with us: “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” He then goes on to stress just how intentional and disciplined we must be in our quest, or else we’re sure to falter. Our towers will stand unfinished, or we’ll find ourselves making peace with oppressors to keep from experiencing persecution and ridicule. In the Rule, Saint Benedict echoes this warning in the chapter on receiving new brothers, which our community just happened to hear read yesterday: “Do not grant newcomers to the monastic life an easy entry,” Saint Benedict cautions, “[if] they promise perseverance in their stability, then after two months have elapsed let this rule be read straight through to them, and let them be told: ‘This is the law under which you are choosing to serve. If you can keep it, come in. If not, feel free to leave.’” There can be no illusions, no mitigations, and no excuses when it comes to following Christ, in the monastery or anywhere else. 

There’s one more thing to beware of. As I have moved from corporate zero to professed monk, I’ve learned that the decision to leave all things and follow Christ is, unfortunately, not really a one-and-done kind of thing. It’s easy to make; not so easy to keep. For my part, I certainly struggle with distractions, temptations, laziness, and selfish tendencies pretty much every day. Ask a monastic – especially an older one – when they decided to become a nun or monk and they’ll likely answer, “When I woke up today.” As with any committed way of life, if we’re serious about staying the course in the monastery, then always we must begin again. But Saint Benedict reassures us that, even in our human weakness, all things are possible in the One whom we seek: “What is not possible to us by nature,” he tells us,  “let us ask to be supplied by the help of God’s grace … [while] there is still time, while we are in this body and have time to accomplish all these things by the light of life – we must run and do now what will profit us for eternity.” That’s a mission statement we can all get behind. 

So then, having heard this invitation – and what, dear friends, is more delightful than this voice of the Lord calling to us? – let us set our resolve to bear our own crosses, calculate the cost, make our plans, and get about the business of following Jesus. “May we prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may he bring us all together to everlasting life.” Amen. 

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 9, July 5, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Robert James Magliula OHC

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, July 5, 2026

• Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
  Romans 7:15-25a
  Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

The lectionary today omits the little section of today’s Gospel which Matthew calls Jesus’ reproach of the cities.

“Then he began to reproach the cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you.” (Matt.11:20-24)

Let’s be honest. We don’t much like reproach in our lives or in our scriptures. Most would rather skip quickly to the good part, that part about the humble and gentle Jesus who we think is going to make life easy. But we need to hear these words of reproach as individuals and as a nation. It seems most appropriate during this 250^th anniversary that we hear it as a nation. They’re important words. Reproach by Jesus is not rejection but the other side of care and concern.

These are the towns where Jesus spent most of his ministry and where he did most of his miraculous works. They know Jesus well and he knows them. He knows their unbelief, their unwillingness to change, their refusal to yoke themselves to him and to his gospel.

“To what shall I compare this generation?” Jesus basically tells them that they are like a bunch of spoiled kids unhappy with whatever is offered them. They want it their way or no way. John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking and they said he was possessed. Jesus came eating and drinking and they call him a glutton and a drunkard who hangs out with the wrong kind of people.”

I think that Jesus would say the same to us today as a nation. Are we different from Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum? How are we responding to Christ and his gospel?

Reflecting on this question raises a deeper and more fundamental question. To what or whom are we yoked? To what or whom do we give ourselves? What or who takes priority in our lives, orienting how we live and relate to others, how we make decisions? We all harness our lives to something: another person, work, family, success, reputation, country, political party. Sometimes our yokes are more interior like fear, anxiety, anger, beliefs and opinions, the losses and tragedies of our lives. Regardless, they are the relationships and attachments that we depend on for meaning. For better or worse, they give us our life’s direction. We’ve all got them and usually more than one.

What yokes do you wear? As Christians, we know the right answer should be Jesus. But is that how we live? Is it reflected by our deeds and in our relationships, or just in our words?

If we are going to call ourselves Christians, we must yoke ourselves to Christ. He must be the primary and determining yoke. We cannot simply just hear the gospel and say our prayers. The gospel of Christ demands a response. The people of these cities have seen God among them; they have witnessed the signs. Jesus cleansed their lepers, healed their sick, cast out their demons, forgiven their sins, calmed the sea. Still, they reject Jesus and, before him, John the Baptist.

Sometimes we are like those little kids in the marketplace, unhappy with whatever is offered us. We want the gospel to fit our beliefs, desires, and agendas rather than shaping our beliefs, desires, and agendas to fit the gospel. That is not an option for Jesus. The yoke of Christ must reorient our lives and priorities.

It means we take seriously our life of discipleship. Our prayer is more about intimacy with God than getting what we want. We work for justice and the dignity of every human being. We care for the poor, feed the hungry, and defend the oppressed. We love our enemies. We offer forgiveness. Our faithfulness should be evident by how we live and speak. We let go of anger and don’t live in fear.

To be yoked to anything or anyone other than Christ will only leave us weary and burdened. Our lives will be frenzied and fragmented. This is a disease of the soul in which we end up comparing, competing, and judging ourselves and each other. There is no internal integrity. Our reserves run dry and we live exhausted with nothing of substance to offer, making our relationships superficial.

Too often we treat our weariness and medicate our burdens with addictions, a new toy, a vacation, a nap, a day off, busyness and perfectionism. Interior voids cannot be filled by exterior things. Often, we’re just as weary afterwards as we were before. These are not the antidote to our exhaustion. The antidote to our exhaustion begins with sharing the yoke of Christ, the heart of God and the heart of humanity beating as one.

Jesus isn’t upset because the cities misbehaved, but because they have chosen a life less than what they were created for. Jesus is like a loving parent looking at his exhausted children, so tired we do not know which end is up, so weary we misbehave. This is why his words of reproach soon become words of invitation and love. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

To take on the yoke of Jesus is to take on his life: to let our heart love like his.  Only by living and moving as one with him, will we find rest for our souls. +Amen.

The Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul, June 30, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Daniel Hansknecht, OHC

The Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul, June 30, 2026

• Ezekiel 34:11-16
• 2 Timothy 4:1-8
• John 21:15-19

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Almighty God, whose blessed apostles Peter and Paul glorified you by their martyrdom: Grant that your Church, instructed by their teaching and example, and knit together in unity by your Spirit, may ever stand firm upon the one foundation, which is Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
This prayer is a collect taken from our feast day breviary, used to conclude the proper offices for the Feast of Peter and Paul. It, to my mind, pretty succinctly describes why the Church celebrates these two figures, and how we continue to benefit from hearing their stories.
As leaders and teachers, Peter and Paul guided the first Christians through the turbulent and vulnerable early years of the Church’s existence. Their words and actions, as inspired by Jesus Christ and moved by the Holy Spirit, united the new group culturally and theologically; transforming them from a local Jewish sect into an international, multi-ethnic faith which could stand firm under its own strength. Their list of accomplishments is long, and books have literally been written to tell us about their lives, but there is one quality they both share that I would like to focus on: and that is leadership. What is the nature of leadership? How is it different today from the time of Peter and Paul? What characteristics should we look for in our leaders? And how can we act as leaders within our own spheres of influence?
I would personally say that leadership requires one to wear many hats. The first of these is to fill the role of guide and decision maker. Leaders often pick the direction a group will go as they plan for the future. The second is that of a cheerleader. Especially in small groups, leaders often need to inspire confidence, boost morale, and create a sense of unity amongst those who follow them. The third is that of a role model, exemplifying the group’s culture, values, and standards for behavior. And lastly, leaders often need to wear the hat of peacemaker, whether that be external diplomacy or internal conflict resolution.
The prophet Ezekiel showcases each of these nicely when God is said to be a shepherd: God brings the sheep to green pastures, God gathers the scattered sheep and unites them as a single flock, God exemplifies justice by strengthening the weak and destroying the strong, and God resolves the sheep’s metaphorical conflicts when binding up the injured. Way to go, God! I’d vote for you.
However, this prophetic proclamation didn’t come out of blue skies. God chose to announce this role for themself precisely because we were already failing at the job. Just a few verses earlier, Ezekiel calls out the misdoings of the false shepherds:
“The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: To the shepherds—thus says the Lord God: Woe, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat; you clothe yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatted calves, but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak; you have not healed the sick; you have not bound up the injured; you have not brought back the strays; you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and scattered - they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.” (Ezekiel 34:1-6)
To answer the question ‘How is leadership different today from the time of Peter and Paul?’, I would say: not so different. Like the famous quote from the Book of Ecclesiastes declares:
“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
Here, ‘nothing new’ describes both the needs of the people and how people act out when those needs aren’t met. As groups, protests form and revolutions are fomented. As individuals, strongmen shore up their insecurities by seeking power and unquestioned authority. Instead of false shepherds, we can call these defensive egos false leaders, and they continue to prey upon the vulnerable in our societies.
To a degree, even Paul foreshadows the present when he says, “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but… will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires…” That sounds to me remarkably like the effects of an echo chamber; one of the modern ways information is controlled and power is clung to.
Radically different, however, is how Jesus describes leadership: “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant” (Matthew 20:26). Supposedly, Robert K. Greenleaf coined the term “servant leadership” in 1970, but I think Jesus beat him to it.
Here within the Order of the Holy Cross, we recently elected a new Superior, and — a full year before the election — we began reflecting on the question of what qualities we wanted from our leadership. I’ve streamlined the list slightly for this sermon, and its contents fall largely into two categories: universal leadership attributes and religious Christian values. For the former, we wanted our Superior to be someone who is clear, consistent, calm, inclusive, organized administratively, personally integrated, trustworthy, and able to disagree with others while remaining in relationship with them. This half of the list reminds me strongly of the Scout Law.
For the latter, we wanted our Superior to be gospel grounded, open to the Spirit, a seeker of the face of God, and to have a pastoral presence. We also wished for them to cultivate ongoing formation, conversion, and kindness by sharing the spiritual riches of our theological and monastic heritage. And, for good measure, it wouldn’t hurt if their name was Jesus Christ.
All joking aside, heavy is the head which wears the crown, and this is a lot for one person to embody and live into. Jesus himself, I think, would agree with me. Simon son of John, do you love me more than these? Simon son of John, do you love me? Simon son of John, do you love me? Three times Peter is asked if he loves Jesus, and every time he says yes, Jesus then tells him where to direct that love.
This is an intentionally repetitive preamble for Peter’s call to leadership. Intentionally repetitive because loving, caring for, and leading others is an important responsibility which Jesus doesn’t want Peter to answer lightly. Nonchalance — a casual “Yeah, sure Jesus” — will only lead to broken hearts and avoidable suffering.
Of course, there are many degrees and scales to this responsibility, and many degrees to one’s success or failure in it. After all, not everyone is called to lead nations, nor is everyone bound to fail catastrophically. However, I believe that everyone has the potential to be called to care for their neighbor, to mentor the young, to speak out for the disenfranchised, or to otherwise feed the sheep in our lives. Paul solemnly urges us to also proclaim the message, teach with patience, and do the work of an evangelist. But, it should be enough that we “seek peace and pursue it” (Psalm 34:14) as the Psalmist writes.
Our Gospel concludes with one more instruction: “Follow me.” John is the only gospeler who doesn’t explicitly quote Jesus as saying, ‘take up your cross’, but given the context of Peter’s death, I would say this line means much the same. As was mentioned in our opening prayer, the martyrdom of these two saints is the culminating way in which they have impressed themselves on history. Although the cross once symbolized death, for us it symbolizes rebirth and new life. Here in the United States, we will soon be celebrating July 4^th, Independence Day, which can also be said to symbolize death and rebirth for us as a nation. To conclude things today, I’ve written a short prayer.
Let us pray:
Dear God, please look over and guide all the leaders in our lives. Let them be responsible stewards for the members of their flock. May they guide us to green pastures and clean waters. May they always be sober and help us to endure suffering. We pray for the leaders of our church, the leaders of our nation, our community organizers, our soccer coaches, our schoolteachers, and everyone in between. And should we be so called, may we too live out these prayers. In the name of your son our savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 8, June 28, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, June 28, 2026

Genesis 22:1-14

Romans 6:12-23

Matthew 10:40-42

Click here for an audio of the sermon

The desert monk Abba Poemen said: "Do not be always wanting everything to turn out as you think it should, but rather as God pleases, then you will be undisturbed and thankful in your prayer." 

Today’s reading from the Book of Genesis is one of the most famous and compelling, but also one of the most horrifying, and abhorrent stories in the Bible. The story is the culmination of a series of episodes in Abraham and Sarah’s life, beginning when God calls Abram to go from his country to the land that God will show him, and God promises that his descendants will be “a great nation,” and that in Abraham all the families of the earth will be blessed. Thus begins Abraham’s epic, with themes of descendants, inherited blessing, and trust. 

But there’s a dilemma- Abraham and Sarah are unable to have children. So, they hatch a plan to use Hagar, an enslaved Egyptian woman in their household, as a surrogate mother, and Ishmael is born. But then, Sarah miraculously gets pregnant and bears Isaac. And so, we get to the story we heard last week. For jealous, self-serving, greedy and likely racist reasons, Sarah wields her power over Hagar and Ishmael. She tells Abraham to get rid of them so that Ishmael would not have a share in the inheritance and Isaac alone would inherit God’s blessing. Nice. Abraham is distressed over this, but he gets over it pretty fast and says he is listening to God, who tells him to listen to Sarah and “send Hagar out”, meaning out to die in the desert! Abraham clearly can’t distinguish God’s voice from his own. And Sarah’s motive is not to do the will of God, but to see that God does hers! No worries, the story shows us how God’s plans are always perfect even when beyond our comprehension and carried out in spite of the chaos we manage to create in ourselves because of our blind self-interests.

The event exposes the mixed motives driving Abraham and Sarah at this point in the story. (And I’m sure we all can relate to mixed motives.) On the one hand, they have faith in God’s promise. They left their homeland of Ur for an unknown place. On the other hand, they maneuver to advance their legacy by excluding others, and by doing so dishonor the spirit of God’s larger goal that, through them and their legacy, “all the families of the earth shall be blessed”. In fact, it seems their scheme to use Hagar as a surrogate itself shows a lack of trust in God. It is an anxious attempt to take matters into their own hands. 

Isaac is now the sole means for their legacy, for the fulfillment of God’s promise, for the “great nation” to come, and ultimately, for God’s plan to bless “all the families of the earth.” And so, we get to today’s distressing episode. Both accounts are really written as a consecutive, parallel pair. When both stories are read together, one can easily see how the central drama is a kind of death march for one of Abraham’s children, with God saving the child at the last moment. Both stories circle around the themes of descendants, inherited blessing, and trust. And in both stories, divine promises are vindicated: God will make “a great nation” from Ishmael no less than from Isaac. God desires neither Ishmael nor Isaac to die. On the contrary, God protects them both, cares for them both, and fulfills promises to make them both ancestors of multitudes. Why then, one might ask, God’s command for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?

First, it’s important to understand that, as horrific as it sounds to our 21st Century western ears, the reality is that child sacrifice was a feature of ancient semitic devotion. For the Canaanites, Moabites, the people of Tirah, and other established civilizations in the Mediterranean Near East the custom would have been far from unknown. 

The very beginning of the story makes God’s purpose crystal clear: “After these things [meaning casting out Hagar and Ishmael and saying God told him it was OK] God tested Abraham”. The test echoes the ordeal he has put Hagar and Ishmael through. He sent Hagar out into the desert on a death march with her only child. Now he is the one who is walking on the death march of his other child. He attempted to cut off Hagar and Ishmael from inheriting the covenantal blessing. Now he will contemplate being cut off from the covenantal blessing by his own hand. If Isaac dies, Abraham will have no heir. The death of Isaac would mean the death of God’s promise that his descendants will become a great nation, and that Isaac will inherit God’s blessing- the inheritance Abraham and Sarah tried to hoard when they exiled Hagar and Ishmael. He manipulated for gain. Now he will face losing everything. He must choose between serving God and serving his own blind self-interests, between control and faith, between self-preservation and true love, which seeks to serve and to share, not to arrogate blessings to itself.

The story invites us to ask ourselves some fundamental questions about our relationship with God: 

What really drives my faith?  Confidence or fear, trust or anxiety, devotion or self-preservation. Do I really desire to serve God or serve myself using “faithful obedience” as a strategy for gain? All acts of “obedience” and “faith,” take place under a temptation to maneuver for gain- to obey in order to acquire an advantage.

The story makes it clear that God’s mercy always transcends mere punishment. Yes, there is accountability for what Abraham has done to Hagar and Ishmael, but more importantly there is a purging of manipulation and control necessary for a true strengthening of faith. In the end, Abraham’s faith and God’s promise are vindicated. God says to Abraham, “Now I know that you fear God.” Fearing God in this sense means regarding God with deep respect, reverence, and awe. 

In the evolution of human consciousness, the sacrificial instinct has to do with the deep recognition that something always has to die for something bigger to be born. From human sacrifice to animal sacrifice, human consciousness has gradually gotten closer to what really has to be sacrificed- our own ego! We will all find endless disguises and excuses to avoid letting go of what really needs to die for our own spiritual growth- our beloved passing self. It’s about developing the humility that finds strength in vulnerability. The vulnerability found when we accept our powerlessness, let go of our need for control, and truly believe and accept that God is in charge and has a plan much bigger and better than our ego’s plans. 

This is the vulnerability Jesus demands from his disciples when in today’s Gospel story he gives them instructions, not about extending welcome, as it may seem, but about receiving it, in his name. He sends his disciples to share the good news of God’s Reign as vulnerable outsiders. They had no religious institutions to back their efforts, or political tools to wield. And Jesus instructed them to carry nothing- no money, no food, no extra clothes. They had nothing at all, except the power of the Holy Spirit moving through them to heal and serve. Even the simplest, most basic need, a cup of cold water, would have to be met by others.   

The Desert Monastics taught that true peace can only be found by surrendering our own ego and will. They emphasized that inner transformation requires giving up the need to control. Again, Abba Poemen: "Do not be always wanting everything to turn out as you think it should, but rather as God pleases, then you will be undisturbed and thankful in your prayer." And Jesus said: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+  

The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, June 24, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Wesley Borden

The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, June 24, 2026

• Isaiah 40:1-11
• Acts 13:14b-26
• Luke 1:57-80

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

Today we keep the feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist. And its fun to speculate on what the appropriate menu for this feast might be... What sort of food would John the Baptist want? To be sure, it will have to be something very simple, something with very little taste – perhaps a main course of curdled milk and a desert of locusts and wild honey...

The Baptist's notoriously somber food wishes notwithstanding, the importance of John in the Christian story cannot be overstated. He prepares the world for Jesus and is acclaimed as the greatest profit ever known. We’re part of the story too – it is a story of how we prepare our hearts and minds and bodies to receive Jesus. It is the story for much of Advent, but it is really a story for any time and for all time.

There are a number of details in Luke’s account of the birth of John the Baptist that tell us the story is bigger than John. The fact that John is not to be named after his father is a very important detail – he is, after all, the first-born child. But Zecharia is out. He is to be named John – a name which has its roots in the Greek god of water. Is this subtle foreshadowing – after all, John will baptize with water. Water is also essential to all life as we know it. This may be Luke’s way of showing us that this story touches us all, not only the faithful Jews.

In the story of John’s birth, we have one of the most moving passages in scripture - the Song of Zachariah, also known as the Benedictus. “For you, John, will go before the Lord, bringing knowledge of salvation and light to those who are in darkness. You will lead us in the way of peace.” In our monastic worship, this is a hymn we sing at the start of every day.

This is John who we meet today. The forerunner. The profit called to prepare the world for the coming of Jesus. The one who leads us to peace. But the promise of John is a little different than the reality of John. He is a profit. And he does make the way ready for Jesus. But I’m not sure he leads us in the way of peace – at least not as we think of it. And frankly, I think John’s a bit of an extremist.

He wears sack cloth and covers himself with ashes. He has a diet of locust and wild honey. He leads his followers in a life of denial and fasting. His message is a harsh one – a message of judgement. He greets people with statements like “You brood of vipers...” His judgement against Herodias, the wife of Herod, is so severe that it costs him his life. If John were with us today, I wonder if he’d want to be part of the Episcopal Church, or any Church... Given his assessment of the Herod, I wonder what he might have to say about the leaders of our day.

Many of the things that John does are things that Jesus calls us not to do. Jesus doesn’t lead his followers in this extreme way. When asked why his followers are so much less disciplined than John’s, Jesus says that we are at a banquet and so we must celebrate – something that we will do symbolically in just a few moments at the Eucharist. Most importantly, Jesus does not condemn people, not even the wife of Herod. Jesus is building a congregation of sinners, not of saints.

I do believe Jesus looks with great joy at many churches in our time, even as we struggle. For our struggle is how to be greater in our inclusion – how to draw the circle wide and draw it wider still. The inclusion of Jesus, after all, knows no bounds.

But we still need to focus on John’s story and how it applies to us.

One essential element of John’s story is that he seems utterly uninterested, perhaps even incapable of telling anything but the truth – the whole unvarnished truth. He does not have the spirit of a politician. This is one aspect of the prophetic witness of John that we need. Being polite is one of the great virtues in contemporary Christianity. We didn’t get the from John... nor from Jesus...

If we could come to regard sugarcoating the truth as sin, perhaps fewer children would starve... perhaps fewer school children would be shot, perhaps health care would be universally available in the richest country on earth.

When we begin to encounter God as part of our lives – and I think all of us come to a point where we either begin an adult encounter with God, or we walk away from faith – when we encounter God we tend to respond in extreme terms. How could we do otherwise?

We want to get rid of everything that is ungodly; clean up our lives... And we want others to do the same. We hear the same call that John heard;

build a straight pathway in the wilderness, smooth out the rough places, fill in the potholes and get rid of the wicked folks. But at some point, we learn that Jesus also calls us to a feast, not a fast. And we learn that our purpose is not to build a perfect road. Our purpose is to travel that road with our brothers and sisters and all of God’s creation.

In other words, we must learn how to have a relationship with God. This is a lifelong process. Any relationship takes time and effort to grow strong and whole. Relationships often have clumsy starts and rough patches, but over time they grow deeper and more complex. John the Baptist helps us start the relationship with God, but Jesus teaches us about the deep and abiding love of God.

That is ultimately what John was doing. Welcoming God into his life, welcoming the incarnation of God into this world, welcoming Jesus, who at that time was a highly expected stranger. There were many sets of expectations for the Savior, but they were mostly seriously off the mark. I would just point out that even these days, many of our expectations of Jesus are way off the mark.

But in our different ways we are working to welcome Jesus into our lives through the increasing of love and justice. John is called a profit of the Most High – a title none of us claim. But we are all called by our baptism to be God’s messengers. The message is God’s love. And we must remember that love and justice are eternally linked.    

The call of John the Baptist is a call to all of us through our baptism: Make the world ready, make ourselves ready, shine light in dark places, lead the way to God’s peace. The call doesn’t come from John - it comes through John. That is perhaps the most joyful piece of John’s story - the story of all of us.

God can use us as we are. We can serve as God’s instruments in spite of ourselves.

And if we are a little too harsh, or a bit clumsy, or we muddle the message a bit, it's OK. We can fall down and get back up. Because ultimately, we are messengers, not the message. The message is that God, who is love, is alive and dwells with all creation.